Freud

Top Ten Tidbits About Carl Jung

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on December 6, 2010

So much on the Internet is ” Top Ten Whatevers” etc.


This Jungcurrents blog is even a “Top Ten Psychoanalytic Blog.“  Seriously. There is even a badge to prove it!  (“Badges, we don’t need to stinking badges.”)


Thought this blog should have some Top Ten Stuff also.

1) Carl was probably a third generation bastard: his grandfather was allegedly the illegitimate son of Goethe.

2) Carl’s first dream was of an “enormous turd crashing through a shiny cathedral roof.”

3) Carl avoided school for six months when he was twelve by fainting when he was supposed to go to school or do his homework.

4) Carl married to the second richest woman in Switzerland

5) Freud fainted in 1912 and Carl carried him to a couch.

6) Carl recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism and had an indirect role in the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous.

7) Carl was recruited by John Foster Dulles to be a spy in WWII. (He was #488.)


8) Carl was one of the people on the cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

9) The cover of The Police’s final album Synchronicity which was named after Carl Jung’s theory.

10) Carl’s alleged last words were, “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight.”

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Synchronicity: Freud and Jung

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on August 1, 2010

Freud and Jung 1908

In a letter to Freud dated June 12, 1911, [Jung] wrote: “My evenings are taken up largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up which will certainly appear incredible to you…I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens.”

Freud was alarmed by Jung’s letter. Jung’s interest in synchronicity and the paranormal rankled the strict materialist; he condemned Jung for wallowing in what he called the “black tide of the mud of occultism.” Just two years earlier, during a visit to Freud in Vienna, Jung had attempted to defend his beliefs and sparked a heated debate. Freud’s skepticism remained calcified as ever, causing him to dismiss Jung’s paranormal leanings, “in terms of so shallow a positivism,” recalls Jung, “that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my tongue.” A shocking synchronistic event followed. Jung writes in his memoirs:

While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot — a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: ‘There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.’ ‘Oh come,’ he exclaimed. ‘That is sheer bosh.’ ‘It is not,’ I replied. ‘You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report! ‘Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words that the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his distrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him.
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