Introduction to Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1853 in Kesswil, Swtizerland. Most people know his as the Swiss Psychologist and founder of analytical psychology. Although he was a clinician all his life much of his studies during his life were of Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, arts, and astrology. His most famous contributions to modern day psychology include archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the theory of synchronicity.

In his early career Jung was a student of Sigmund Freud, the father of the psychoanalytic movement. But as the years wore on Jung started to find Frued's views and interests in astrology and spiritualism too extreme. Here is a sampling of some of the letters they exchanged that showed their diverging points of view:

In 1911 Jung wrote his mentor Sigmund Freud stating "Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer - with the aid of the libido theory, it seems to me. At the moment I am looking into astrology, which seems indispensable for a proper understanding of mythology. There are strange and wondrous things in these lands of darkness." Jung added: "Please don't worry about my wanderings in these infinitudes. I shall return laden with rich booty for our knowledge of the human psyche...."

Freud responded: "I am aware that you are driven by innermost inclination to the study of the occult and I am sure you will return home richly laden. .....You will be accused of mysticism, but the reputation you won with the Dementia will hold up for quite some time against that."

In a later letter, Jung wrote Freud that Jung's time was taken up largely with astrology and the calculating of horoscopes: "in order to find a clue to the core of human psychology." This stemmed from his fascination in the calculation of a woman's chart who was suffering from an "mother complex." Jung felt there was a certain configuration in the chart which accurately described the woman's mother. Jung went on to state: "I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens. For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment."

Freud responded that he was "willing to believe anything that can be made to sound reasonable." However, Freud expressed his concerns about Jung and stated that he did not approve of the field of occultism. After Freud's and Jung's later famous breakup in 1913, Freud made it clear that he did not approve of Jung’s study of paranormal mysticism.

Jung's calculating of horoscopes continued on during the rest of his long and productive life. When challenged by an especially difficult case, Jung would sometimes have the patient's birth chart cast in order to gain more insight into the individual.

In a letter written to written to Hindu astrologer, B.V. Raman, September 6th 1947 - Jung wrote:

"Since you want to know my opinion about astrology I can tell you that I've been interested in this particular activity of the human mind since more than 30 years. As I am a psychologist, I am chiefly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds on certain complications in the character. In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand. From such experiences I formed the opinion that astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call 'projected' - this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations."

In the next post I will discuss the connection of Jung's archetypes (which also make up the popular Myers-Briggs Personality Test) to the elements of the zodiac.