My first excursion into the deep water of the life of Jung was Laurens van der Post’s Jung and the Story of Our Time (Hogarth Press, 1976). This book was written by a man who spent time with Jung and greatly admired him so it is a more glorified biography. A more recent book is Frank McLynn’s Carl Gustave Jung: A Biography (ISBN 03121944-55 - It is now out in paperback). This was a much more extensive biography that decided to show Jung warts and all with an emphasis on the warts.
Hayman’s book falls somewhere in between these two authors. It does emphasise the mental turmoil Jung went through to the point of psychosis, particularly after he split off from Freud in 1913.
In this day and age of telephones and computer, it is hard to imagine the massive amounts of correspondence that was written and kept by Jung and others. Hayman writes as if he is in Jung’s head from the time he was a little boy until he finally dies in 1961. Can you imagine what it would be like to have people collecting all kinds of data on you so that when you finally pass on they can write a very detail biography of your life? (Maybe there are government files that exist somewhere right now!)
Within the Jung/Myers personality types world there are those who only vaguely know that Myers and Briggs drew heavily on the works of Jung, particularly his Psychological Types (1921 - Translated into English in 1923). At the other end are those who have studied Jung extensively and may actually understand his ideas. I fall somewhere in the middle. Reading these biographies will help you better understand some of Jung’s concepts, but he is much too complex for any one book or even a series of books to lead to a full understanding.
This book deals extensively with Jung’s concept of God. As the son of a Protestant pastor he was well indoctrinated with Christian thought, but even as a boy he had his own beliefs about God. He was very interested in the spiritual world and through his cousin Helly Preiswerk, he encouraged her to do trace work to contact the other side. All his life Jung pursued the occult world through tarot, I Ching, astrology, numerology, etc. He felt they had a lot to offer in terms of the collective unconscious.
He began his studies in medicine and then specialized in mental illness. He was quite excited by the works of Freud and what they had to offer his patients. Freud was excited by a young man who Freud felt he could pass on the mantle of psychoanalysis. This relationship only lasted a few years as Jung began to explore different ideas which Freud felt didn’t fit his theories.
The break with Freud along with World War I had a devastating effect on Jung and he battled his demons for a number of years. Jung’s experience with his own mental difficulties helped him in his work with his patients and his theories of how the mind worked.
Freud came up with the idea of transference, where the patient has a strong attachment to the therapist, and counter transference, where the therapist has a strong attachment to the patient. Jung was strongly affected by transference and had a number of affairs with his women patients. At one time he was having affairs with five different women! His long suffering wife, Emma, put up with it and to preserve her own dignity became a therapist in her own right.
As a therapist Jung had the ability to see the world as the patient saw it. One patient remarked that Jung must be an introverted feeler just as he was. It was only later that the patient realized that Jung was an introverted thinker. While Jung had theories as to how therapy should be conducted, he realized that it was more important to listen to the patient and let the patient guide him to a cure.
Jung had many admirers, mainly women. He had difficulty being friends with men. He had associates world wide, but few felt really close to him. You had to love him and accept him on his own terms as he was a very cranky man to live with. His mood changed frequently.
Today, Jung is being appreciated by a wider audience than ever before. Many consider him the father of the New Age.
Even with this great man there was a lot of politicking and manoeuvring on his part and those who had their own agenda. He was very human, with his mistakes as well as his triumphs. He got caught up in supporting the Nazis in its initial stages. When he saw what was really happening, he also had to watch that he didn’t get caught up in the Nazi net as well.
I found this book a good read. It gets a bit more difficult at the end when it describes the infighting that occurred. It is more difficult to keep track of all the people involved. All in all it was worth the effort.