Memories Dreams and Reflections

Jung Recounts His Dream About Richard Wilhelm (Translator of the I Ching)

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on February 16, 2011

A few years later Wilhelm was staying as a guest in my house, and came down with an attack of amoebic dysentery. It was a disease he had had twenty years before. His condition grew worse during the following months, and then I heard that Wilhelm was in the hospital. I went to Frankfurt to visit him, and found a very sick man. The doctors had not yet given up hope, and Wilhelm, too, spoke of plans he wished to carry out when he got well. I shared his hopes, but had my forebodings. What he confided to me at the time confirmed my conjectures. In his dreams, he revisited the endless stretches of desolate Asiatic steppes – the China he had left behind. He was groping his way back to the problem which China had set before him, the answer to which had been blocked for him by the West. By now he was conscious of this question, but had been unable to find a solution. His illness dragged on for months.

A few weeks before his death, when I had had no news from his for a considerable time, I was awakened, just as I was on the point of falling asleep, by a vision. At my bed stood a Chinese in a dark blue gown, hands crossed in the sleeves. He bowed low before me, as if he wished to give me a message. I knew what it signified. The vision was extraordinarily vivid. Not only did I see every wrinkle in the man’s face, but every thread in the fabric of his gown.

Wilhelm’s problem might also be regarded as a conflict between consciousness and the unconscious, which in his case took the form of a clash between West and East. I believed I understood his situation, since I myself had the same problem as he and knew what it meant to be involved in this conflict. It is true that even at our last meeting Wilhelm did not speak plainly. Though he was intensely interested when I introduced the psychological point of view, his interest lasted only so long as my remarks concerned objective matters such as meditation or questions posed by the psychology of religion. So far, so good. But whenever I attempted to touch the actual problem of his inner conflict, I immediately sensed a drawing back, an inward shutting himself off – because such matters went straight to the bone. This is a phenomenon I have observed in many men of importance. There is, as Goethe puts it in Faust, an “untrodden, untreadable” region whose precincts cannot and should not be entered by force; a destiny which will brook no human intervention.

Memories, Dreams and Reflections
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Additional Links:

Richard Wilhelm, Wikipedia

Book: Memories, Dreams and Reflections

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 7, 2010

Many folks interested in Jung think that this is the best of the books about him; when I read it in my twenties — knowing nothing about Jung — I found it a bit strange and hard to follow. I don’t think it is necessarily the best book to start reading about Jung (which is probably Man and His Symbols), but it is essential reading to understand his life and his view of his life. It is particularly interesting for an autobiography because it is really about the internal events of a life, much different than the usual book about the external events of person’s life.

From Wikepedia:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (original German title Erinnerungen Träume Gedanken) is a partially autobiographical book by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and associate Aniela Jaffé. The book details Jung’s childhood, his personal life, and exploration into the psyche.

In 1956 Kurt Wolff, publisher and owner of Pantheon Books, expressed a desire to publish a biography of Jung’s life. Dr. Jolande Jacobi, an associate of Jung, suggested Aniela Jaffé be the biographer. Jung was very reticent to cooperate with Jaffé in the beginning, but because of his growing conviction of the work’s importance, he became more engrossed in the project and began writing part of the text himself. In total, Jung wrote the first three chapters on his childhood and early adulthood, the chapter entitled “Late Thoughts,” and the chapter on his travels to Kenya and Uganda.[2] The rest of the text was written by Jaffé through direct conversation with Jung.

The content and layout of the yet-unpublished manuscripts was heavily disputed. Jung’s family, in the interest of keeping Jung’s private life from the public eye, pushed for deletions and other changes. Those involved in its publication demanded massive cuts in the text’s length to keep the price of printing down. Jaffé herself was accused of censorship when she began exercising her Jung-appointed authority as editor to reword some of his thoughts on Christianity she deemed too controversial. Eventually, the disputed text (including a chapter entitled “Encounters” detailing some of Jung’s friend and acquaintanceships with various people) was integrated into other chapters and Pantheon Books stopped their push for further deletions after Jaffé and others’ protest. The book was finally published in 1963, two years after Jung’s death. It has remained in print ever since.

Synchronicity and Jung’s Philemon Dream

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 4, 2010


From the Philemon Foundation Website:

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung recounted the dream in which Philemon first appeared to him. Jung saw a sea blue sky, covered by brown clods of earth that appeared to be breaking apart.

Out of the blue, he saw an old man with kingfisher wings and the horns of a bull flying across the sky, carrying a bunch of keys.

After the dream, Jung painted the image, as he did not understand it.

During this intense period, Jung was struck by the synchronicity of finding a dead kingfisher, a bird rarely seen around Zurich, in his garden by the lakeshore.

Thereafter, Philemon played an important role in Jung’s fantasies.
To Jung, he represented superior insight and was like a guru to him.
(Source)

From Memories, Dreams and Reflections, page 189:

During the days when I was occupied with the painting, I found in my garden, by the lakeshore, a dead kingfisher! I was thunderstruck, for kingfishers are quite rare in the vicinity of Zurich and I have never since found a dead one. The body was recently dead – at the most, two or three days – and showed no external injuries.