Jung.

Jung

Deirdre Bair

Little, Brown & Co.

Boston, New York, London

ISBN: 0316076651, $35.00, 881 pp.

JUNG: A BIOGRAPHY, by the eminent biographer Deirdre Bair, is a meticulously researched, arresting, and well-written book about the great analyst and theorist who is second only to Freud in the annals of psychoanalysis. The biography was authorized by the Jung family, who as his heirs and the recipients of his royalties, have refused access to his archives to those writers they consider unsympathetic to him. Does this make Bair less able to be objective in her assessment of Jung? Perhaps. But then, who among us can be completely impartial?

Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in the vicarage of Kesswil, Switzerland, as the fourth-born but first-surviving child of a poor country parson and his unhappy, troubled wife who believed that she had two personalities. The Jungs were only accidentally Swiss, as Jung's illustrious grandfather, Dr. Med. Carl Gustav I Jung, had been exiled from Germany for political reasons. Rumors abounded (and were boasted of by the subject) that the first Carl Jung was the illegitimate grandson of the great writer, Goethe. That his grandfather was of German heritage and bragged of such distinguished ancestry had a profound influence on young Carl's life. Apparently, the boy was raised to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, both as his namesake and as a physician. It is interesting that as a boy Jung was never referred to at "Pastor's Carl," but always "Dr. Med. Jung's grandson."

Carl was an oddball from the very beginning. A hefty boy much taller than his classmates, he was always bedraggled looking and usually wet and odorous when the weather was bad, as he trudged along on his daily hour and a half walk to school. One morning when he was 13 and walking to school, he had an experience that he said was "the end of his childhood." Feeling as if he were coming out of a fog, he heard himself saying, "I am myself!" Like his mother, he had a vision that he had two personalities within himself, an awkward, clumsy boy at the end of the 19th century and that of an old man living in the 18th century who wore high-buckled shoes, a powdered wig, and drove in a fine carriage. Around the same time he had a recurring daydream in which God was sitting on his throne in Heaven and shit an enormous turd on the cathedral below. Jung reflected upon this fantasy for the rest of his life. I wonder why such lengthy deliberation was necessary. It seems clear from the image what Jung thought of the church.

The first time the 24-year-old Doctor Jung saw Emma Rauschenbach, he entered the house of a friend and beheld a 14-year-old, brown-haired girl halfway up the broad staircase. He was smitten instantly, and knew she would become his wife. Captivated by her intelligence and, undoubtedly, her family fortune, Jung wooed and won the young woman. Despite the reluctance of her father that she wed a penniless doctor, they married. After their first child, Agathe Regina, was born, Emma settled into a routine in which her intellectual ambitions were stymied: "he soared, while she.. took care of the mundane details so that he could" (p. 83). The marriage lasted for the rest of her life, incorporating certain idiosyncrasies unthinkable to most of their world.

Nevertheless, there were three separate occasions when Emma tried to divorce Jung. In each case, he became ill or had a serious accident that necessitated her nursing him back to health The most serious attempt occurred around Jung's romance with Tony Wolff, a brilliant young woman of 22 who was his patient. Jung was taken with her intellectual stimulation and camaraderie that he evidently was not able to find in his wife. Jung and Toni fell in love and began an affair so serious that for decades Jung referred to her as "his other wife." For reasons of her own, Emma put up with the situation and lived in a triangular relationship for the rest of her life with Jung and Wolff. The arrangement was deeply distressing to Emma, Toni, and the Jung children, if not to the master himself.

Originally beloved by Freud and designated as his Christian "crown prince," his "scientific son and heir," and the man who would rescue psychoanalysis from being dubbed the "Jewish science," the two analysts ended their relationship in a disagreement over Freud's assumption that the root cause of neurosis is sexual repression. My impression is that the rupture upset Freud much more than it did Jung.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book deals with the question of Jung's antisemitism and his sympathy for the Nazi party, the opinion of Freud and many others which followed Jung the rest of his life and still does not go away. Ms. Bair carefully considers the evidence, and comes to the conclusion that Jung cooperated with the Nazis only to ensure the continued existence of psychoanalysis after the demise of the party. Some of us are not so sure. While it is true that he cooperated during World War 11 with Allen Dulles to shed light on the character of Hitler, and was recruited by the OSS to serve the cause of the Allies, I believe that Jung in his heart of hearts was ambivalent about Jews. According to Bair, "He remained affiliated with German psychoanalysis from the Nazi solidification of power in the 1930s through the first years of the war, insisting that his primary reason was to aid disenfranchised Jewish practitioners, but debate still rages almost half a century after his death" (p. 431). Even more condemning are derogatory and inappropriate statements he made about Jewish character and culture, such as that "Freud and Adler had created specifically Jewish doctrines ... thoroughly unsatisfying to the German mentality" (p. 435). Jung did not help his case when he spoke of the "antichristianism of the jews".... who are not "so damned innocent after all, (p. 444)" and further suggested that the role of intellectual Jews in pre-war Germany would be interesting to investigate. His major detractors insist that Jung was sympathetic to the Nazis because of his ethnic identity as a German, but the issue has not been settled one way or the other. Perhaps it never will be.

Ms. Bair believes that Jung is now passe, and "remembered chiefly for his psychological autobiography, MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS, and for terms he used such as 'New Age,' 'the age of Aquarius,' 'archtypes,' 'anima' and 'animus.' As a Freudian psychoanalyst, perhaps it is unfair of me to say that history is a better judge of Jung's contributions than his contemporaries. I personally have always considered much of his writing gobbledegook which I rarely was able to use in my practice, and I concur with Ms. Bair that his theories on alchemy, UFOs, and extrasensory perception sometimes verge on the psychotic.

JUNG: A BIOGRAPHY, by Deirdre Bair, is a tour de force, and the definitive biography about the famous analyst. It is doubtful whether another biography will equal its thorough and systematic research, or be better written. If there is a criticism of Ms. Bair's research, however, it concerns "the deficiency of her excellency." Granted, the book delves deeply into the heart and soul of Jung, his close associates and family, so that we feel we know them as living people. But are 881 pages really required to accomplish that feat? Wouldn't careful research and fine writing provide similar insight? Certainly the lengthy section which deals with Jung's difficulties in getting his books ready for publication could be cut drastically without lessening the value of the biography. In any event, this reader (who, incidentally, finds it difficult while reading to handle so hefty a book), is frequently told more than she really needs to know.

Nevertheless, because of its immaculate scholarship, excellent writing, and absorbing story, JUNG: A BIOGRAPHY is highly recommended to people who love biographies, to students of psychology and psychoanalysis, and all those who enjoy a good read.