I began to investigate the circumstances of the unknown aspects of the life of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung after my unexpected first and extremely dramatic meeting with Sigmund Freud in London in 1931 (see "Freud and the Poltergeist", v. 4, 1955-56) …
The reasons that made Freud interested in my manuscript (subsequently published under the title "In the Footsteps of the Poltergeist", New York, 1958) became clear only after the publication in 1957 of the third volume of Ernst Jones's book "The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud." Here, in the chapter on the occult, Jones briefly mentions an incident on March 25, 1909, in which Jung, on his first visit to Freud, "demonstrated the ability to artificially induce a poltergeist by causing objects to clatter across furniture surfaces."
Jones suspected that there was some connection between this first meeting (describing which he used, of course, the wrong term) and Freud's written comments on my manuscript, so he reprinted my work in his own translation. However, Freud only briefly mentions this demonstration in a letter to Jung; by the way, this letter was not sent immediately, as Jones claims, but three weeks later - obviously, it took Freud some time to recover from the shock.
It was only after Jung's posthumous notes, Memories, Adventures and Reflections (Pantheon Books, New York), appeared in March 1963, and in part thanks to an article in Atlantic Magazine (November 1962) that preceded publication, did the general public first learn about the historical meeting of the founders of modern psychiatry.
To understand how Jung succeeded in this demonstration of "witchcraft", one must recall some of the hereditary traits of the great psychiatrist, referring to the testimony of his secretary Angela Joffe ("CGJung und die Grenzgebiete der Psychologie", Munich, 1960). Jung's followers should have been extremely unpleasantly struck by the fact that his grandfather and grandmother constantly observed the appearance of ghosts, and his mother even kept a diary of incidents, where she regularly entered everything concerning her own visions and premonitions. From his parents, Jung also passed on the talent of telekinesis - the ability to move objects at a distance without coming into physical contact with them. That he possesses paranormal abilities, Jung himself did not have the slightest doubt. Once at home they had a curious incident:in the kitchen table, a kitchen knife flew into four pieces with a deafening crash, which, apparently, had to do with his mother's participation in a seance shortly before. Jung photographed the wreckage of the metal and sent the photograph to Dr. Ryne at Duke University (Boundaries of the Mind, Dr. Ryne, 1947).
It is possible that some hereditary abilities, really close to "witchcraft", Jung unconsciously used in at least two cases of communication with Freud: I mean their meetings in 1909 and 1912. The Viennese psychiatrist fainted twice, and then accused Jung of using the “deadly evil eye”, without explaining, however, what kind of “evil eye” it was, from which the victim immediately fainted. Jung denied the accusations, but soon he began to doubt himself - especially after one day in a dream he saw Freud aged, frail, moreover, very much like a ghost.
After his break with Freud, Jung developed something like a "Judas complex", which manifested itself already in the pages of "The Psychology of the Unconscious." On Christmas night in 1912, he killed Freud in his sleep, no less. Of course, the "victim" took a temporary pseudonym there and turned into Wagner's hero "Siegfried" (the composer's father, by the way, was called Sigmund). No sooner had the dream come to an end, and Jung's subconscious had already begun to threaten the "owner" with all kinds of punishments. Upon awakening, a mysterious voice predicted his death in case the meaning of the dream was not solved. Jung, who always had a loaded revolver in his desk drawer, was seriously scared. And then there was an insight: well, of course, Siegfried symbolizes the "second self" - a ruthless tyrant, striving for power, from whom you need to get rid of. It's strangethat Jung never came up with a simpler solution: "Siegfried" is almost an abbreviation: Sig-Freud. In those days, he unconsciously tried to get rid of the ideas imposed by the latter.
Not wanting to become the "crown prince" of Freud (and it was this role that the creator of psychoanalysis had prepared for him), Jung longed for complete autocracy in his own scientific workshop. Very soon the feeling of a great destiny was embodied in a vision: in the image of a dove, the Holy Spirit himself descended to him.
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Then Jung saw Elijah, but instead of Moses, he was accompanied by blind Salome with a large black snake. In the next dream (or perhaps a vision - this line had begun to fade by that time), Philemon flew across the sky in front of Jung with bull horns (a hint of the legend of the god Mithra) and bright wings colored like a kingfisher. The name of the bird (English: "kingfisher"), apparently, had something to do with the idea of a "fisher" of human souls.
Soon Philemon (in Greek mythology, the servant of the gods) began to communicate with Jung as a spirit-mediator. Walking along the paths of the garden, Jung talked with him at length, like Cromwell (who was advised by someone who called himself "The Devil") and Socrates (his "advisor" was called Daimon). However, by this time Jung was already well aware that he was on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown. By the scientist's own admission, only work and love for his family saved him from complete insanity. Such was the price Jung had to pay for five or six years of mind-boggling subconscious activation. The revelations received from above became for him a source of inspiration that did not dry out for at least forty-five years.
Feelings of guilt towards Freud are only a minor detail in Carl Gustav Jung's psychoneurotic drama. The most important factor was heredity. In his classic doctoral dissertation of 1899 (published in The Psychology and Pathology of the So-Called Paranormal Phenomenon), Jung relied heavily on observations of a young girl-medium who repeatedly summoned the spirit of his grandfather during her seances. Jung kept secret the fact that 16-year-old "S. V." was his cousin; the appearance of deceased relatives at her sessions and pushed the psychiatrist later to study his own genealogy, which grew into a real mania.
Jung's grandfather (like his father later) was a Protestant priest; he could work on his sermons only if his daughter (Karl Gustav's mother) was nearby and drove away annoying spirits. At the same time, he also held the post of Grand Master of the Masonic lodge and was, as it were, the illegitimate son of Goethe (this rumor has only the most indirect confirmation: the passion for Goethe and Faust did not leave Jung all his life).
“Goethe described the essence of the conflicts that fill my life,” wrote Jung. "Faust and Mephistopheles merged into one in me." It is appropriate to add a fantastic detail to this confession: Jung imagined that he was living simultaneously in two layers of time: he explained his maniacal fascination with the culture of the 18th century by the fact that it was there that “the real Jung” was staying. The image of the latter in the form of a gray-haired old man was constantly before his eyes.
The visit of the Holy Spirit and fellowship with Philemon had the most extraordinary consequences for Jung. Under the influence of his own dreams, he found himself in the grip of very strange ideas that all the dead are alive, require knowledge about life, but they can only draw it from the consciousness of the living. From then on, Jung imagined that his duty was to educate the dead. Following Philemon's instructions, he created Septem Sermones Ad Mortuous - Seven Sermons for the Dead - which was preceded by truly apocalyptic events that erupted in his home. After one of the dreams, the psychiatrist “lost his soul,” finding in return the dubious pleasure of seeing ghosts every now and then. Then a poltergeist settled in the rooms of the house. Finally, the "spirits of the dead" were thrown here in droves and in chorus began to demand "knowledge" for themselves.
Jung's son, meanwhile, dreamed of a fisherman with a smoking pipe for his head. The next morning Jung found a dead kingfisher in the garden, remembered how Philemon's wings shimmered on the night of his first visit, and decided that the death of the bird marks nothing more than the end of the "fisher of human souls." Seeing the Holy Spirit (and interpreting it as "the manifestation of the image of God, inaccessible to the imagination"), Jung sat down to his "Seven Sermons" and wrote them without stopping for three days. At the end of the work, Philemon expressed utter satisfaction, and the "spirits of the dead" immediately left the house.
Jung wrote about his mother: “By day it was a loving, gentle woman. After dark, strange changes began to occur to her. Like those clairvoyants who resemble some outlandish beasts, she started to wander around as such a harsh, ruthless priestess, and the house at such moments seemed to us a cage with rods."
By that time, Jung himself was already ideally suited to this description. It is hardly surprising that as soon as his cousin introduced the scientist [2] into the circle of spiritualists, he immediately began to experiment with two famous mediums of his time, Rudy Schneider and Oscar Shag, whose abilities, in turn, were very interested in the legendary German parapsychologist Baron Schrenck-Notzing …
Due to this circumstance, all explicative and ideological concepts of mediums turn out to be fragmentary, conditioned and, ultimately, erroneous, while independent, i.e. not burdened with mediumistic abilities, minds also possessing a high degree of culture, as was the case in the case of Allan Kardek, Leon Denis or Arthur Conan Doyle demonstrate an extraordinary breadth of outlook, which is capable of making the most amazing generalizations and forming the most daring and yet logically flawless ideological concepts. (J. R.)
Further. An interesting fact is mentioned in his book Spock by Dr. Fanny Moser. It turns out that at the age of three, Jung had a dream that affected his entire life. It was a birth fantasy with pronounced elements of a phallic cult. But Jung's main claim to Freud was that the founder of psychoanalysis allegedly "deified sex"; amazingly, Jung has clearly worshiped the same god all his life deep down! He even saw mythological revelations in the appearance of flying saucers (who had visited a psychiatrist more than once, imagine, in a dream! [3]).
And once Jung spoke about how, after a heart attack, his spirit was forced to leave his body for a short time and ended up in Pardos Rimmonium - a cabal Pomegranate Garden - where he witnessed the marriage of Tiphareth and Malshut - two symbolizing the female and male principles of the divine spheres through which the Lord comes out to our world. Jung then “transformed” into Rabbi Simon Ben-Johai and celebrated his own marriage in heaven. This mystical ritual was followed by a vision of the lamb of Jerusalem, after which Jung attended the festival of Hierogamus, where the father of the gods Zeus and Mother Hera were married, almost following the descriptions of Homer's Iliad. All this is striking evidence of the fact that after the conflict with Freud, Jung's entire sexual life proceeded exclusively in visions of a mythological nature.
Biographical sources tell us nothing about the romantic side of the life of the great psychiatrist, about how he met his future wife or about relationships with children. Little is known to us about Jung's youthful love affairs, although one thing is indisputable: his relationship with the opposite sex was initially marred by an extreme degree of disappointment. The answer is simple, but unexpected: it turns out that he was in love with his younger cousin - the same girl who acted as a medium at spiritualistic séances. In the end, she was convicted of fraud, and the shocked Jung could neither forget nor forgive this deception. The depth of his feelings for S. V. can be guessed from the dream in which the deceased wife appeared before Jung.
“She appeared to me in her prime,” wrote the psychiatrist, “in a dress that my cousin, a spiritualist medium, made for her many years ago. His wife probably never had to wear a more beautiful thing during her lifetime. The expression on her face could not be called joyful or sad. It shone with wisdom and understanding. This face did not express earthly feelings; they no longer had power over her."
Jung, however, could not admit one undeniable truth: throughout his married life, he perceived his wife as the embodiment of the image of a young cousin. The meaning of the dream was that, following into another world, the unhappy woman found peace: she was no longer worried about the fact that for her husband she was just a symbol of lost love.
S. V., who is partly responsible for Carl Gustav Jung's crazy fantasies of the past and present, died at the age of twenty-six. He could not recover from this second blow.
From the book: "Between Two Worlds". Author: Fodor Nandor