“The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful,” declared celebrated Swiss shrink Dr. Carl Jung in a letter he wrote to Sigmund Freud in 1910.
Before taking a psychiatrist’s theories on human beings and their behavior as gospel, is it worth taking a look at the actions and character of the man? Jung in many ways epitomized the misogynistic Teutonic views of ultra-conservatives in 19th century Europe.
Jung’s long-suffering wife Emma bore him five children, regrettably four girls and only one son. Dr. Sue Mehrtens, Director of the Jungian Center for Spiritual Sciences in Waterbury, Vermont, and author of Jung the Man: His Life Examined, describes how Jung had little time for his family and believed that children should be seen and not heard. However, he did have time to play some vicious pranks on them, such as setting off a firecracker that left his daughter Gret permanently deaf in one ear. Despite being a man of means, he refused to send his daughters to college, believing that bearing children, cooking, cleaning and serving men were all they were good for.
Prone to angry outbursts, Jung had numerous affairs and exhibited no consideration for his wife’s feelings about them. He would have his long-time mistress and former patient, Antonia “Toni” Wolff, visit him in his marital home whenever he wanted, frequently appearing in public with her and taking her on trips abroad. He referred to Toni as his other wife. Emma apparently tried to divorce her husband three times, but each time he would get sick or have an accident, forcing her back into devoted wife mode, believing that he would fall apart if she left.
Cantankerous misanthrope though he was, Carl Jung is still revered today as the founder of analytical psychology. He also gave the world the much used concepts of extrovert and introvert. So would I still be an extroverted person if Jung hadn’t invented the term? Would it have cramped my style too much if I couldn’t neatly pigeonhole myself into the extrovert box? Even without Jung’s terms, we could probably have made do with shy versus outgoing. And can we really neatly categorize people as either introverted or extroverted? Many are a bit of both depending on the circumstances. Perhaps Jung’s daughters were introverted in the presence of their irascible, unpredictable father, but extroverted when with friends their own age.
Jung’s work involved attempting to help people with mental and emotional problems. As such, I believe that his misogyny and the stunning lack of empathy he showed for his own family should be taken into consideration when evaluating the value of his psychological theories in the light of modern-day sensibilities. If he had been a Nobel Prize winner in the field of physics, literature or economics, judging his work by the character he showed in his personal life would be far less relevant.
So what made me decide to blog about Carl Jung? Well, a friend of mine recently took a break from saving the world (actually I kid you not—he currently devotes his life to environmental causes) to complete a 76-question Jungian survey to find out his own personal ten archetypes. This led to my friend and I having a discussion about whether Jung’s nasty character took away some of the value of his work. And just in case you’re one of the few people willing to admit that you have no clue as to the meaning of the word “archetype,” I’ll explain: An archetype is a characteristic representing a universal pattern of human nature. Carl Jung was much enamored with the concept and considered archetypes to represent the collective unconscious of mankind.
My friend’s quest for his Jungian archetypes inspired me to go back to antiquity to discover my own top ten archetypes. Instead of slaving over a questionnaire for a Jungian expert to evaluate, meditating gently in front of my computer, I channeled the ancient Taoist Zhēn Bèn (真笨) School of the Hú Shuō Bā Dào (胡说八道) Tradition. You can see the results on CJ’s Archetypes.
You may wonder why I have dared to make fun of the work of a man who is still extremely highly regarded in the field of psychoanalysis today. The answer may stem from the results I got from a Jungian Archetype Quiz I recently did online at psychologistworld.com. This online questionnaire was really good value for money—it was free. It Apparently both my “self” and my “persona” archetype is the Joker (also known as the Trickster). Now I know that deep down, I’m just a dark-humored, comic book villain.