Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Jung: Analytical
Psychology
© The McGraw−Hill^107
Companies, 2009following year, Freud invited Carl and Emma Jung to Vienna. Immediately, both
Freud and Jung developed a strong mutual respect and affection for one another,
talking during their first meeting for 13 straight hours and well into the early morn-
ing hours. During this marathon conversation, Martha Freud and Emma Jung busied
themselves with polite conversation (Ferris, 1997).
Freud believed that Jung was the ideal person to be his successor. Unlike other
men in Freud’s circle of friends and followers, Jung was neither Jewish nor Viennese.
In addition, Freud had warm personal feelings for Jung and regarded him as a man
of great intellect. These qualifications prompted Freud to select Jung as the first pres-
ident of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
In 1909, G. Stanley Hall, the president of Clark University and one of the first
psychologists in the United States, invited Jung and Freud to deliver a series of
lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Together with Sándor
Ferenczi, another psychoanalyst, the two men journeyed to America, the first of
Jung’s nine visits to the United States (Bair, 2003). During their 7-week trip and
while they were in daily contact, an underlying tension between Jung and Freud
slowly began to simmer. This personal tension was not diminished when the two
now-famous psychoanalysts began to interpret each other’s dreams, a pastime likely
to strain any relationship.
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections,Jung (1961) claimed that Freud was un-
willing to reveal details of his personal life—details Jung needed in order to inter-
pret one of Freud’s dreams. According to Jung’s account, when asked for intimate de-
tails, Freud protested, “But I cannot risk my authority!” (Jung, 1961, p. 158). At that
moment, Jung concluded, Freud indeed had lost his authority. “That sentence burned
itself into my memory, and in it the end of our relationship was already foreshad-
owed” (p. 158).
Jung also asserted that, during the trip to America, Freud was unable to inter-
pret Jung’s dreams, especially one that seemed to contain rich material from Jung’s
collective unconscious. Later, we discuss this dream in more detail, but here we
merely present those aspects of the dream that may relate to some of the lifelong
problems Jung had with women. In this dream, Jung and his family were living on
the second floor of his house when he decided to explore hitherto unknown levels of
his house. At the bottom level of his dwelling, he came upon a cave where he found
“two human skulls, very old and half disintegrated” (p. 159).
After Jung described the dream, Freud became interested in the two skulls, but
not as collective unconscious material. Instead, he insisted that Jung associate the
skulls to some wish. Whom did Jung wish dead? Not yet completely trusting his own
judgment and knowing what Freud expected, Jung answered, “My wife and my
sister-in-law—after all, I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing!”
“I was newly married at the time and knew perfectly well that there was noth-
ing within myself which pointed to such wishes” (Jung, 1961, pp. 159–160).
Although Jung’s interpretation of this dream may be more accurate than
Freud’s, it is quite possible that Jung did indeed wish for the death of his wife. At
that time, Jung was not “newly married” but had been married for nearly 7 years, and
for the previous 5 of those years he was deeply involved in an intimate relationship
with a former patient named Sabina Spielrein. Frank McLynn (1996) claimed that
Jung’s “mother complex” caused him to harbor animosity toward his wife, but a
Chapter 4 Jung: Analytical Psychology 101