Jung and Complex Psychology

Abstract

Jung’s early interest in a dynamic psychology of the subconscious is evident in Aniela Jaffé’s biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963a), historically put forward as a book by Jung himself.¹ There, Jaffé has Jung recounting from a young age his preoccupation with dreams, visions, and inner psychic events related to an understanding of his own personality.² We see this interest again in 1898 when Jung read DuPrel, Swedenborg, Passavant and others, and decided, because of the absence of any such dynamic language in the prevailing mental science of the times, to go into psychiatry as a specialty. His dissertation on Hélène Preiswerk, his studies of the Word Association Test, and his psychotherapeutic work with hospitalized schizophrenics under Bleuler transformed a youthful interest into a full-fledged and life-long quest for a dynamic psychology of the interior life.

My complex psychology was in place long before I met Freud.

C. G. Jung