Carl Gustav Jung - Primer of Jungian Psychology :: Biographies

Carl Gustav Jung - Primer of Jungian Psychology Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a son of a minister in Switzerland. He was born on July 26, in the small village of Kesswil on Lake Constance. He was named after his grandfather, a professor of medicine at the University of Basel. He was the oldest child and only surviving son of a Swiss Reform pastor. Two brothers died in infancy before Jung was born. Jung's mother was a neurotic and often fought with his father. Father was usually lonely and very irritable. When the child could not take his mother's depressions and his parents' fights, he sought refuge in the attic, where he played with a wooden mannikin. Carl was exposed to death early in life, since his father was a minister and attended many funerals, taking his son with him. Also, Jung saw many fishermen get killed in the waterfalls and also many pigs get slaughtered. When he was eleven, he went to a school in Basel, met many rich people and realized that he was poor, compared to them. He liked to read very much outside of class and detested math and physical education classes. Actually, gym class used to give him fainting spells (neurosis) and his father worried that Jung wouldn't make a good living because of his spells. After Carl found out about his father's concern, the faints suddenly stopped, and Carl became much more studious. He had to decide his profession. His choices included archeology, history, medicine, and philosophy. He decided to go into medicine, partly because of his grandfather. Carl went to the University of Basel and had to decide then what field of medicine he was going to go into. After reading a book on psychiatry, he decided that this was the field for him, although psychiatry was not a respectable field at the time. Jung became an assistant at the Burgholzli Mental hospital in Zurich, a famous medical hospital. He studied under Eugen Bleuler, who was a famous psychiatrist who defined schizophrenia. Jung was also influenced by Freud with whom he later became good friends. Freud called him his crown-prince. Their relationship ended when Jung wrote a book called "Symbols of Transformation." Jung disagreed with Freud's fundamental idea that a symbol is a disguised representation of a repressed wish. I will go into that later. After splitting up with Freud, Jung had a 2 year period of non- productivity, but then he came out with his "Psychological Types," a famous