Carl Jung

Abstract

Carl Jung was born in 1875. He was the son of a Protestant clergyman and therefore grew up in an explicitly Christian environment. His childhood was difficult in that he experienced considerable illness and deprivation. He had strong leanings towards the German idealist and romantic tradition. He studied medicine but it was psychiatry that drew his interest — he wrote a dissertation on a medium and her dissociated states of consciousness. He also read widely in philosophy, language and theology. After receiving a medical degree from Basle University in 1900 he worked at the Burghölzli mental hospital in Zurich. He married in 1903, and in 1909 decided to work in general practice and devote more time to writing. By the time he met Freud in 1907 and joined the ViennaPsychoanalytic Circle he had already formulated a theory of the mind that was distinct from Freud’s. He broke with Freud seven years later to pursue his own approach to psychoanalysis, and continued with his writing and practice until he died in 1961. He travelled widely, especially in Africa and Asia, to study different cultures.