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."

Memories, Dreams, Reflections: School Years

I’ve been reading Chapter 2 for some time but my work with SoulCollage® has gotten in the way of putting my thoughts to paper until now. In Chapter 2, we find ourselves in C.G.’s school years. All of this is very interesting to me. Under the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, I am an INFJ, the same personality type as Carl Jung. While I have found the description of this type to be uncannily accurate, I had no idea how similar in tone two people with the same personality type could be. We will see if that continues as the book covers his later years.

Jung appeared to be a fairly timid, lonely child, obviously (on hindsight) brilliant, and struggling to find his way to live with his uniqueness. Jung began to recognize different parts within him very early. One was the school boy and one a rather staid adult archetype. He also identified a personality that I would classify as his subconscious intuitive nature. The fact that he could even identify these parts so distinctly at such a young age shows the beginnings of his life work. His imagination was vivid and visual; accordingly, the parts were described and identified clearly within his mind.

Jung’s father was a parson who had an elementary faith-based belief, theology. The boy, C.G., was consumed with thinking about God. Through his internal dialogue and imagery, he viewed God as encompassing both "good and bad." However, he had difficulty with the Christian duality and the idea of the devil. During a trance state, he experienced an event that allowed him to view God in a way that would be blasphemous to his community (actually to me it sounded more like a pre-adolescent boy’s daydream). Through that experience, however, Jung identified grace. At this time he believed that following the will of God would result in things turning out for the best. He knew from experience (for faith was not part of his equation) that grace was given only to those who “fulfilled the will of God without reservation.”

Questions of faith continued to plague C.G. throughout his childhood. He found God in nature more than with man, although he felt that all sentient beings contained a spark of God. At times he felt alone with God. When that occurred he “was outside time; I belonged to the centuries; and He who then gave the answer was He who had always is, was there.” These mystical experiences were significant events in Jung’s life. He struggled with the idea of a personified God, yet “I understood that God was, for me at least, one of the most certain and immediate of experiences.” The "Other" side of him (which I will identify in hypnosis terms as the subconscious) was able to have a personal experience with God. "Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God." He often found himself moved beyond the events of his daily life and into the "boundlessness of God's world."

I think Jung would not have felt so much internal struggle with theology if he had the knowledge of other religions (something he was interested in but his parents disallowed). The Hindu Vedantic idea of God as being both the one and the many may have resonated with him at this time. He said, "The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years...I was the sum of my emotions, and the "Other” in me was the timeless, imperishable stone."

Not surprisingly, Jung felt a connection to Meister Eckhart who once said: “If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence." Jung's inner world was large and filled with nature images. He especially loved trees and the forest (like me), and he found them both "mysterious" and the "direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life." This is where he felt close to the deepest meaning. Reading this, I wondered if Jung would have had the same mystical, reverent experience I did before the 1,200 year old tree in the rain forest of Mears Island, British Columbia.

Church, however, was problematic for Jung. And he was disappointed when his communion resulted in no discernible internal change. The relatively orthodox faith he experienced seemed to him a masquerade and he felt like an outsider. “ C.G. found school equally as boring. He had some difficulty with boys bulling. Several times when he was interested in the topic, he wrote papers far above his years and was publicly accused by the teacher of plagiarism. Although untrue, this had an effect on his relationship with his peers. It was also at this time that he decided being best in school was no longer the goal and he strove to not be conspicuous. Being number two was an easier position with his peer group.

As a teenager, his father took Jung to a mountain and allowed him to go alone on a train ride to the top. The view of the expansive vista had a profound impact on Jung. For many years afterward, he would bring into his mind the memory of this place whenever he was overworked or weary (a good bit of self-hypnosis even if he didn't recognize it as such).

More to come in Chapter 3…