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Carl Jung and Analytical Psychology

In 1906 a Swiss psychiatrist by the name of Carl Jung, intrigued with Sigmund
Freuds theory of unconscious motivation, sent a letter to Freud, initiating a 7-year
correspondence. Jungs own research on the word association test had garnered
support for some of Freuds fundamental postulates about the unconscious and
Freud invited Jung and his wife to visit him in Vienna. In their initial meeting
Freud and Jung met for 13 straight hours. Freud considered Jung, who was 19
years his junior, the son who would succeed him as leader of the psychoanalytic
movement and nominated him for the inaugural presidency of the International
Psychoanalytic Association. Jung, for his part, perceived Freud as the powerful
father figure he never had. Even before Jung assumed his duties as head of the
international association, it was apparent that he and Freud held disparate views on
the unconscious. B oth men tried to overlook their differences, but the chasm that
formed between them soon grew too wide to ignore. The irreconcilable breach that
would eventually bring an end to their personal and professional relationship freed
Jung to pursue and cultivate his own theory of personality.
JUNG, THE PERSON
Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland, a small village on the shores
of Lake Constance, on July 26, 1875. His father, Paul Jung, was a Protestant
minister, and his mother, Emilie, was a rather large boned, generally bossy woman
who would mumble to herself and act in a manner indicative, at least to Jung, of
someone in touch with the spirit world. It should be noted that Jungs older
brother, who was born two years before him, died after only a few days; an event
that may have made Jungs parents more protective of him than they would have
otherwise been had his brother survived. Because Jungs only other sibling, his
sister Gertrude, with whom he never formed a close bond, was not born until 1884,
he was an only child for the first 9 years of his life. Jung perceived that his parents
marriage was unsatisfying to both parties, which both confused and frightened him.
W hen he was only 3 years old Jungs mother was hospitalized for depression and