106 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
This chapter looks with some detail into the long and colorful life of Carl
Jung and uses fragments from his life history to illustrate his concepts and theories.
Jung’s notion of a collective unconscious makes his theory one of the most intrigu-
ing of all conceptions of personality.Biography of Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was born on July 26, 1875, in Kesswil, a town on Lake Constance
in Switzerland. His paternal grandfather, the elder Carl Gustav Jung, was a prom-
inent physician in Basel and one of the best-known men of that city. A local rumor
suggested that the elder Carl Jung was the illegitimate son of the great German
poet Goethe. Although the elder Jung never acknowledged the rumor, the younger
Jung, at least sometimes, believed himself to be the great-grandson of Goethe
(Ellenberger, 1970).
Both of Jung’s parents were the youngest of 13 children, a situation that may
have contributed to some of the difficulties they had in their marriage. Jung’s
father, Johann Paul Jung, was a minister in the Swiss Reformed Church, and his
mother, Emilie Preiswerk Jung, was the daughter of a theologian. In fact, eight of
Jung’s maternal uncles and two of his paternal uncles were pastors, so both religion
and medicine were prevalent in his family. Jung’s mother’s family had a tradition
of spiritualism and mysticism, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Preiswerk,
was a believer in the occult and often talked to the dead. He kept an empty chair
for the ghost of his first wife and had regular and intimate conversations with her.
Quite understandably, these practices greatly annoyed his second wife.
Jung’s parents had three children, a son born before Carl but who lived only
3 days and a daughter 9 years younger than Carl. Thus, Jung’s early life was that
of an only child.
Jung (1961) described his father as a sentimental idealist with strong doubts
about his religious faith. He saw his mother as having two separate dispositions.
On one hand, she was realistic, practical, and warmhearted, but on the other, she
was unstable, mystical, clairvoyant, archaic, and ruthless. An emotional and sensi-
tive child, Jung identified more with this second side of his mother, which he called
her No. 2 or night personality (Alexander, 1990). At age 3 years, Jung was separated
from his mother, who had to be hospitalized for several months, and this separation
deeply troubled young Carl. For a long time after, he felt distrustful whenever the
word “love” was mentioned. Years later he still associated “woman” with unreli-
ability, whereas the word “father” meant reliable—but powerless (Jung, 1961).
Before Jung’s fourth birthday, his family moved to a suburb of Basel. It is
from this period that his earliest dream stems. This dream, which was to have a
profound effect on his later life and on his concept of a collective unconscious,
will be described later.
During his school years, Jung gradually became aware of two separate aspects
of his self, and he called these his No. 1 and No. 2 personalities. At first he saw
both personalities as parts of his own personal world, but during adolescence he
became aware of the No. 2 personality as a reflection of something other than
himself—an old man long since dead. At that time Jung did not fully comprehend
these separate powers, but in later years he recognized that No. 2 personality had