MY LIFE is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the
personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions
and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of
science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot
experience myself as a scientific problem.
What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub
specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is
more individual and expresses life more precisely than does
science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far
too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life.
Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tel
my personal myth. I can only make direct statements, only "tel
stories." Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem.
The only question is whether what I tel is my fable, my truth.
An autobiography is so difficult to write because we possess no
standards, no objective foundation, from which to judge ourselves.
There are real y no proper bases for comparison. I know that in
many things I am not like others, but I do not know what I real y am
like. Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not
a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. But what is it to be
that? Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I
cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. Only
a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can a
man form any definite opinions about himself?
We are a psychic process which we do not control, or only partly
direct. Consequently, we cannot have any final judgment about
ourselves or our lives. If we had, we would know everything--but at
most that is only a pretense. At bottom we never know how it has al
come about. The story of a life begins somewhere, at some
particular point we happen to remember; and even then it was
already highly complex. We do not know how life is going to turn
out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be
vaguely hinted at.
The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous
phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individual y, it is so fleeting,
so insufficient, that it is literal y a miracle that anything can exist and
develop at al . I was impressed by that fact long ago, as a young
medical student, and it seemed to me miraculous that I should not
have been prematurely annihilated.
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome.
Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears
above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away--an
ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and
decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of
absolute nul ity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives
and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the
blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.
In the end the only events in my life worth tel ing are those when the
imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one. That is why I
speak chiefly of inner experiences, amongst which I include my
dreams and visions. These form the prima materia of my scientific
work. They were the fiery magma out of which the stone that had to
be worked was crystal ized.
Al other memories of travels, people and my surroundings have
paled beside these interior happenings. Many people have
participated in the story of our times and written about it; if the
reader wants an account of that, let him turn to them or get
somebody to tel it to him. Recol ection of the outward events of my
life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters with the
"other" reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly
engraved upon my memory. In that realm there has always been
wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost importance by
comparison.
Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories
only if their names were entered in the scrol s of my destiny from the
beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind
of recol ection.
Inner experiences also set their seal on the outward events that
came my way and assumed importance for me in youth or later on. I
early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within
to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very
little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.
Therefore my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I
cannot tel much about them, for it would strike me as hol ow and
insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner
happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and
with these my autobiography deals.
1
First Years
WHEN I was six months old, my parents moved from Kesswil on
Lake Constance to Laufen, the castle and vicarage above the Fal s
of the Rhine. This was in 1875. My memories begin with my second
or third year. I recal the vicarage, the garden, the laundry house, the
church, the castle, the Fal s, the smal castle of Worth, and the
sexton's farm. These are nothing but islands of memory afloat in a
sea of vagueness, each by itself, apparently with no connection
between them. One memory comes up which is perhaps the
earliest of my life, and is indeed only a rather hazy impression. I am
lying in a pram, in the shadow of a tree. It is a fine, warm summer
day, the sky blue, and golden sunlight darting through green leaves.
The hood of the pram has been left up. I have just awakened to the
glorious beauty of the day, and have a sense of indescribable wel -
being. I see the sun glittering through the leaves and blossoms of
the bushes. Everything is whol y wonderful, colorful, and splendid.
Another memory: I am sitting in our dining room, on the west side of
the house, perched in a high chair and spooning up warm milk with
bits of broken bread in it. The milk has a pleasant taste and a
characteristic smel . This was the first time I became aware of the
smel of milk. It was the moment when, so to speak, I became
conscious of smel ing. This memory, too, goes very far back.
Stil another: a lovely summer evening. An aunt said to me, "Now I
am going to show you something." She took me out in front of the
house, on the road to Dachsen. On the far horizon the chain of the
Alps lay bathed in glowing sunset reds. The Alps could be seen
very clearly that evening. "Now look over there"--I can hear her
saying to me in Swiss dialect---"the mountains are al red." For the
first time I consciously saw the Alps. Then I was told that the next
day the vil age children would be going on a school outing to the
Uetliberg, near Zurich. I wanted so much to go too. To my sorrow, I
was informed that children as smal as I could not go along, there
was nothing to be done about it. From then on the Uetliberg and
Zurich became an unattainable land of dreams, near to the glowing,
snow- covered mountains.
From a somewhat later period comes another memory. My mother
took me to the Thurgau to visit friends, who had a castle on Lake
Constance. I could not be dragged away from the water. The waves
from the steamer washed up to the shore, the sun glistened on the
water, and the sand under the water had been curled into little
ridges by the waves. The lake stretched away and away into the
distance. This expanse of water was an inconceivable pleasure to
me, an incomparable splendor. At that time the idea became fixed
in my mind that I must live near a lake; without water, I thought,
nobody could live at al .
Stil another memory comes up: strangers, bustle, excitement. The
maid comes running and exclaims, "The fishermen have found a
corpse--came down the Fal s--they want to put it in the washhousel"
My father says, "Yes, yes." I want to see the dead body at once. My
mother holds me back and sternly forbids me to go into the garden.
When al the men had left, I quickly stole into the garden to the
washhouse. But the door was locked. I went around the house; at
the back there was an open drain running down the slope, and I saw
blood and water trickling out. I found this extraordinarily interesting.
At that time I was not yet four years old.
Yet another image: I am restive, feverish, unable to sleep. My father
carries me in his arms, paces up and down, singing his old student
songs. I particularly remember one I was especial y fond of and
which always used to soothe me, "Al es schweige, jeder neige ..."
The beginning went something like that. To this day I can remember
my father's voice, singing over me in the stil ness of the night.
I was suffering, so my mother told me afterward, from general
eczema. Dim intimations of trouble in my parents' marriage
hovered around me. My il ness, in 1878, must have been connected
with a temporary separation of my parents. My mother spent
several months in a hospital in Basel, and presumably her il ness
had something to do with the difficulty in the marriage. An aunt of
mine, who was a spinster and some twenty years older than my
mother, took care of me. I was deeply troubled by my mother's
being away. From then on, I always felt mistrustful when the word
"love" was spoken. The feeling I associated with "woman" was for a
long time that of innate unreliability. "Father," on the other hand,
meant reliability and powerlessness. That is the handicap I started
off with. Later, these early impressions were revised: I have trusted
men friends and been disappointed by them, and I have mistrusted
women and was not disappointed.
While my mother was away, our maid, too, looked after me. I stil
remember her picking me up and laying my head against her
shoulder. She had black hair and an olive complexion, and was
quite different from my mother. I can see, even now, her hairline, her
throat, with its darkly pigmented skin, and her ear. Al this seemed
to me very strange and yet strangely familiar. It was as though she
belonged not to my family but only to me, as though she were
connected in some way with other mysterious things I could not
understand. This type of girl later became a component of my
animal. The feeling of strangeness which she conveyed, and yet of
having known her always, was a characteristic of that figure which
later came to symbolize for me the whole essence of womanhood.
1 For this and other technical terms which are commonly used by Jung but
may be unfamiliar to the reader or no longer fresh in his mind, see the
glossary at the end of the book.
From the period of my parents' separation I have another memory
image: a young, very pretty and charming girl with blue eyes and fair
hair is leading me, on a blue autumn day, under golden maple and
chestnut trees along the Rhine below the Fal s, near Worth castle.
The sun is shining through the foliage, and yel ow leaves lie on the
ground. This girl later became my mother-in-law. She admired my
father. I did not see her again until I was twenty-one years old.
These are my outward memories. What fol ow now are more
powerful, indeed overwhelming images, some of which I recal only
dimly. There was a fal downstairs, for example, and another fal
against the angle of a stove leg. I remember pain and blood, a
doctor sewing a wound in my head--the scar remained visible until
my senior year at the Gymnasium. My mother told me, too, of the
time when I was crossing the bridge over the Rhine Fal s to
Neuhausen. The maid caught me just in time--I already had one leg
under the railing and was about to slip through. These things point
to an unconscious suicidal urge or, it may be, to a fatal resistance
to life in this world.
At that time I also had vague fears at night. I would hear things
walking about in the house. The muted roar of the Rhine Fal s was
always audible, and al around lay a danger zone. People drowned,
bodies were swept over the rocks. In the cemetery nearby, the
sexton would dig a hole--heaps of brown, upturned earth. Black,
solemn men in long frock coats with unusual y tal hats and shiny
black boots would bring a black box. My father would be there in his
clerical gown, speaking in a resounding voice. Women wept. I was
told that someone was being buried in this hole in the ground.
Certain persons who had been around previously would suddenly
no longer be there. Then I would hear that they had been buried,
and that Lord Jesus had taken them to himself.
My mother had taught me a prayer which I had to say every evening.
I gladly did so because it gave me a sense of comfort in face of the
vague uncertainties of the night:
Spread out thy wings, Lord Jesus mild,
And take to thee thy chick, thy child.
"If Satan would devour it,
No harm shall overpower it,"
So let the angels sing! "[2]
2 Breit' aus die Fluglein beide,
O Jesu meine Freude
Und nimm dein Kuchlein ein.
Will Satan es verschlingen,
Dann lass die Engel singen:
Dies Kind soll unverletzet sein.
Lord Jesus was comforting, a nice, benevolent gentleman like Herr
Wegenstein up at the castle, rich, powerful, respected, and mindful
of little children at night. Why he should be winged like a bird was a
conundrum that did not worry me any further. Far more significant
and thought-provoking was the fact that little children were
compared to chicks which Lord Jesus evidently "took" reluctantly,
like bitter medicine. This was difficult to understand. But I
understood at once that Satan liked chicks and had to be prevented
from eating them. So, although Lord Jesus did not like the taste, he
ate them anyway, so that Satan would not get them.. As far as that
went, my argument was comforting. But now I was hearing that Lord
Jesus "took" other people to himself as wel , and that this "taking"
was the same as putting them in a hole in the ground.
This sinister analogy had unfortunate consequences. I began to
distrust Lord Jesus. He lost the aspect of a big, comforting,
benevolent bird and became associated with the gloomy black men
in frock coats, top hats, and shiny black boots who busied
themselves with the black box.
These ruminations of mine led to my first conscious trauma. One
hot summer day I was sitting alone, as usual, on the road in front of
the house, playing in the sand. The road led past the house up a hil ,
then disappeared in the wood on the hil top. So from the house you
could see a stretch of the road. Looking up, I saw a figure in a
strangely broad hat and a long black garment coming down from
the wood. It looked like a man wearing women's clothes. Slowly the
figure drew nearer, and I could now see that it real y was a man
wearing a kind of black robe that reached to his feet. At the sight of
him I was overcome with fear, which rapidly grew into deadly terror
as the frightful recognition shot through my mind: "That is a Jesuit."
Shortly before, I had overheard a conversation between my father
and a visiting col eague concerning the nefarious activities of the
Jesuits. From the half-irritated, half-fearful tone of my father's
remarks I gathered that "Jesuits" meant something special y
dangerous, even for my father- Actual y I had no idea what Jesuits
were, but I was familiar with the word "Jesus" from my little prayer.
The man coming down the road must be in disguise, I thought; that
was why he wore women's clothes. Probably he had evil intentions.
Terrified, I ran helter--skelter into the house, rushed up the stairs,
and hid under a beam in the darkest corner of the attic. I don't know
how long I remained there, but it must have been a fairly long time,
because, when I ventured down again to the first floor and
cautiously stuck my head out of the window, far and wide there was
not a trace of the black figure to be seen. For days afterward the
hel ish fright clung to my limbs and kept me in the house. And even
when I began to play in the road again, the wooded hil top was stil
the object of my uneasy vigilance. Later I realized, of course, that
the black figure was a harmless Catholic priest.
At about the same time--I could not say with absolute certainty
whether it preceded this experience or not--I had the earliest dream
I can remember, a dream which was to preoccupy me al my life. I
was then between three and four years old. The vicarage stood
quite alone near Laufen castle, and there was a big meadow
stretching back from the sexton's farm. In the dream I was in this
meadow. Suddenly I discovered a dark, rectangular, stone-lined
hole in the ground. I had never seen it before. I ran forward curiously
and peered down into it. Then I saw a stone stairway leading down.
Hesitantly and fearful y, I descended. At the bottom was a doorway
with a round arch, closed off by a green curtain. It was a big, heavy
curtain of worked stuff like brocade, and it looked very sumptuous.
Curiaous to see what might be hidden behind, I pushed it aside. I
saw before me in the dim light a rectangular chamber about thirty
feet long. The ceiling was arched and of hewn stone. The floor was
laid with flagstones, and in the center a red carpet ran from the
entrance to a low platform. On this platform stood a wonderful y rich
golden throne. I am not certain, but perhaps a red cushion lay on the
seat. It was a magnificent throne, a real king's throne in a fairy tale.
Something was standing on it which I thought at first was a tree
trunk twelve to fifteen feet high and about one and a half to two feet
thick. It was a huge thing, reaching almost to the ceiling. But it was
of a curious composition: it was made of skin and naked flesh, and
on top there was something like a rounded head with no face and
no hair. On the very top of the head was a single eye, gazing
motionlessly upward.
It was fairly light in the room, although there were no windows and
no apparent source of light. Above the head, however, was an aura
of brightness. The thing did not move, yet I had the feeling that it
might at any moment crawl off the throne like a worm and creep
toward me. I was paralyzed with terror. At that moment I heard from
outside and above me my mother's voice. She cal ed out, "Yes, just
look at him. That is the man-eater!" That intensified my terror stil
more, and I awoke sweating and scared to death. For many nights
afterward I was afraid to go to sleep, because I feared I might have
another dream like that.
This dream haunted me for years. Only much later did I realize that
what I had seen was a phal us, and it was decades before I
understood that it was a ritual phal us. I could never make out
whether my mother meant, "This is the man-eater," or, "That is the
man-eater." In the first case she would have meant that not Lord
Jesus or the Jesuit was the devourer of little children, but the
phal us; in the second case that the "man-eater" in general was
symbolized by the phal us, so that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit,
and the phal us were identical.
The abstract significance of the phal us is shown by the fact that it
was enthroned by itself, "ithyphal ical y" (upright) The hole in the
meadow probably represented a grave. The grave itself was an
underground temple whose green curtain symbolized the meadow,
in other words the mystery of Earth with her covering of green
vegetation. The carpet was blood-red. What about the vault?
Perhaps I had already been to the Munot, the citadel of
Schaffhausen? This is not likely, since no one would take a three-
year-old child up there. So it cannot be a memory-trace. Equal y, I
do not know where the anatomical y correct phal us can have come
from. The interpretation of the orificium urethrae as an eye, with the
source of light apparently above it, points to the etymology of the
word phal us (shining, bright).[3]
At al events, the phal us of this dream seems to be a subterranean
God "not to be named," and such it remained throughout my youth,
reappearing whenever anyone spoke too emphatical y about Lord
Jesus. Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite
acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of
his underground counterpart, a frightful revelation which had been
accorded me without my seeking it. The Jesuit's "disguise" cast its
shadow over the Christian doctrine I had been taught. Often it
seemed to me a solemn masquerade, a kind of funeral at which the
mourners put on serious or mournful faces but the next moment
were secretly laughing and not real y sad at al . Lord Jesus seemed
to me in some ways a god of death, helpful, it is true, in that he
scared away the terrors of the night, but himself uncanny, a crucified
and bloody corpse. Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always
heard praised, appeared doubtful to me, chiefly because the
people who talked most about "dear Lord Jesus" wore black frock
coats and shiny black boots which reminded me of burials. They
were my father's col eagues as wel as eight of my uncles-al
parsons. For many years they inspired fear in me--not to speak of
occasional Catholic priests who reminded me of the terrifying
Jesuit who had irritated and even alarmed my father. In later years
and until my confirmation, I made every effort to force myself to take
the required positive attitude to Christ. But I could never succeed in
overcoming my secret distrust.
The fear of the "black man," which is felt by every child, was not the
essential thing in that experience; it was, rather, the recognition that
stabbed through my childish brain: "That is a Jesuit." So the
important thing in the dream was its remarkable symbolic setting
and the astounding interpretation: "That is the man-eater." Not the
child's ogre of a man-eater, but the fact that this was the man-eater,
and that it was sitting on a golden throne beneath the earth. For my
childish imagination it was first of al the king who sat on a golden
throne; then, on a much more beautiful and much higher and much
more golden throne far, far away in the blue sky, sat God and Lord
Jesus, with golden crowns and white robes. Yet from this same
Lord Jesus came the "Jesuit," in black women's garb, with a broad
black hat, down from the wooded hil . I had to glance up there every
so often to see whether another danger might not be approaching.
In the dream I went down into the hole in the earth and found
something very different on a golden throne, something non-human
and underworldly, which gazed fixedly upward and fed on human
flesh. It was only fifty years later that a passage in a study of
religious ritual burned into my eyes, concerning the motif of