The Jung of the Gospels

"Memories, Dreams, Reflections" (MDR) is often regarded as Carl Gustav Jung's autobiography. In reality, Jung only wrote a few chapters, and even these were edited by his secretary Aniela Jaffé, the real mover and shaker behind MDR. The rest of the book is Jaffé's creation. Apparently, Jung never saw the finished manuscript and MDR wasn't published until after his death. The full story is told in "Jung stripped bare" by Sonu Shamdasani.

Despite this, MDR is nevertheless of considerable interest. Regardless of whether it reflects the "real" Jung or not, it certainly shows us the Jung of the Jungians. This is how most Jung fans *want* Jung to be, and what draws them to Jungianism in the first place.

Personally, I found the following chapters interesting: "Visions", "On life after death" and "Late thoughts". Jung describes a near-death experience, discusses the possibility of reincarnation, and explains his views on good and evil. Of course, there is a lot of interesting (and frankly bizarre) material in the rest of the book, as well. Jung had strange visions of an anti-Christian and phallic nature already as a child, and as an adult he met a spirit-being named Philemon, who became his guru. Philemon was a bearded man with two horns and the wings of a kingfisher. (If you ever see him again, please call NBC News!) Jung also tells the famous story of how his house in Switzerland was haunted by the souls of dead crusaders, and how Jung calmed them down by writing "Seven sermons to the dead".

Theologically, pardon the expression, Jung seems to have been a pantheist or impersonal panentheist. His view of God was bipolar: evil is part of God. There is also a strong streak of antinomianism: God prods people to do evil deeds so they can experience his grace, everyone must confront "the shadow", etc. This is the least sympathetic part of Jung's message. Overall, his worldview is pantheistic, animistic and Gnosticizing. Only Jung's scientific pretensions stopped him from sounding like another version of Rudolf Steiner or Madame Blavatsky. (The Theosophical Society Adyar have published a book called "The Gnostic Jung". Hardly a co-incidence.)

At least this is how C.G. Jung comes across in MDR. And whether we like it or not, this is the "archetypal" Jung, the Jung of the Gospels, so to speak, in contrast to "the historical Jung", who may or may not have been somebody else entirely. MDR gives us the culture icon, the spiritual sage preaching to an increasingly secular age in which Man has lost his Soul.

Or something. ;-)