Memories, Dreams, Reflections

In Chapter 4, Jung highlights his years working as a psychiatrist. The young doctor was frustrated by the way his fellow physicians dismissed the stories of patients and, instead, focused solely on diagnosis. One patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia, served as a catalyst for Jung’s diversion from his colleagues in the medical field. He believed that the patient was misdiagnosed and that she suffered from depression. Jung had learned of Sigmund Freud’s methods and his emphasis on investigating and understanding how mental illness manifests. Without telling anyone at the hospital, Jung tried an experimental treatment with the woman, who was soon cured and released.

Jung then became a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Zürich, but four years later, he felt overwhelmed with the work. While attempting to demonstrate hypnosis to a group of students, Jung encountered a woman who entered a trance on her own and had difficulty waking; when she finally came out of her hypnosis, the woman claimed to be entirely healed. Jung was embarrassed by the woman’s miraculous recovery, feeling that it had no connection to the work that he did. This experience and others caused him to turn away from hypnosis as a form of treatment.

After finishing his work as a lecturer, Jung opened his own practice where he worked with patients using his own blend of treatments. He learned that psychosis often has a cause and that finding the root of the cause is the first step toward recovery: “I realized that paranoid ideas and hallucinations contain a germ of meaning. A personality, a life history, a pattern of hopes and desires lies behind the psychosis” (127). Jung asserts that it is the work of the medical physician to uncover the roots of the mental illness.

While working with a woman named Babette who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Jung helped her focus the voices in her head by pursuing Bible study—a favorite topic of her most rational persona. Jung shared his findings with Freud, who was astonished that Jung was able to spend so much time with such an attractive woman. However, Jung had seen the woman for who she was and recognized that the woman’s mental illness stemmed from an extremely difficult childhood.

The psychoanalyst differed from his contemporaries in his belief that he had something to learn from listening to and working with his patients. Many of the people he treated became his students. Jung credits this time of learning from others for teaching him about the nature of human life.

Early in his career as a psychiatrist, Jung admired the work of Freud and used the Austrian doctor’s technique of dream analysis. Freud’s focus on dream interpretation aligned with Jung’s own philosophies. After reading Jung’s work, Freud invited him for a meeting in 1907. The two men talked for 13 hours, and Jung was impressed with Freud’s perspective and intelligence. However, Jung could not shake the feeling that Freud was too focused on the role of repressed sexuality in the unconscious, and he believed that Freud was allowing his singular focus to cloud his judgment about his patients.

In 1909, the two men parted ways. Freud had seen Jung as his intellectual successor, but he grew increasingly anxious and paranoid about Jung’s diverging interests. As Jung dug into dreams and symbols of death, Freud believed that his young colleague might have a death wish against the older psychiatrist. Meanwhile, Jung believed that Freud had his own repressed history that was impacting his research perspective. Freud was unwilling to share details about his own childhood: “I cannot risk my authority!” (158). Jung was critical of Freud’s unwillingness to examine his own psyche, something that Jung saw as a detriment to Freud’s work.

Jung asked Freud to interpret a dream in which Jung descended different levels of a house until he found two skulls in the basement. Each level in the house marked a different period in history. Freud determined that Jung had a death wish against two women in his life. However, Jung saw his own dream differently. Each level of the house represented a new depth of the unconscious. While Freud believed that the psyche intentionally hid meaning within dreams, Jung believed that dreams were an invitation to unlock new information about the self. After breaking with Freud, Jung struggled to find his place in the medical world.

As Jung struggled to find his own path as a psychiatrist without Freud, he decided that he would try a new technique with his patients. Jung asked them to speak freely. Instead of offering an interpretation or diagnosis, he prodded with questions, encouraging his patients to find their own connections and conclusions. He realized that each person holds a personal mythology and that a patient’s interpretation is a necessary part of understanding the archetypes that emerge in the psyche.

Jung was plagued by dreams of his own, and he found it difficult to find the meaning in the images that emerged. He decided that, in order to unlock the secrets of his unconscious, he must submit himself to his deepest impulses. He remembered playing with blocks and building structures when he was a small boy, so he spent time each day engaging in the same form of play. He gathered rocks outside and began building a small village with them on the lake shore. The discovery of a red rock reminded him of the small figure he carved and hid in his attic.

Leading up to World War I, Jung’s dreams and visions became darker and more urgent. When the war started, he wondered about the link between his own consciousness and the larger world. Freud spent the years of the war digging into the recesses of his unconscious. It was during this period that he developed his theory of archetypes, including the anima/animus and the hero.