Carl Jung was 81 when this interview took place. He looks very healthy and happy. I have transcribed first hour and 25 minutes of this video.
NOTE: If some part of this transcript does not make sense, find that location on the video and listen to the original dialogue.
EVANS:
**[00:00:01]** Well, Dr. Jung, we have been discussing in some detail some of the factors in the development of the personality of the individual. And you have very kindly elaborated for us on some of your fundamental concepts, such as the archetype and at least simply what it means in certain types of archetypes, such as the anima and the animus. And we try to show, perhaps in our discussion, some of the ways that your ideas may have differed from those of Dr. Freud.
Now, another concept or idea that seems to be a very interesting one in your work, at least as I see it, is the term or concept persona. And, of course, this seems to have a lot of relevance to the daily living of the individual. I wonder if you would mind telling us a little bit about how you construed this term, persona.
JUNG:
**[00:00:53]** Well, this is a practical concept we need in elucidating people’s relation. I noticed with my patients, particularly with people that are in public life, that they have a certain way of presenting themselves. For instance, take the doctor. He has a certain way for it. For instance, he has good bedside manners. And he behaves as one expects a doctor behaves. He may even identify himself with it and believe that he is what he appears to be. He must appear in a certain form, unless people don’t believe that he is a doctor. And so, when he is a professor, he is also supposed to behave in a certain way so that it is plausible that he is a professor. So, the persona is partially the result of the demands society has. And on the other side, it is a compromise with what one likes to be or as one likes to appear, say.
**[00:2:20]** So, take, for instance, a person. He also has his particular manner and as corresponding to the general expectation. And he behaves also in another way combined with his persona that is forced upon him by society in such a way that also his fiction of himself, his idea about himself, is more or less portrayed or represented. So, the persona is a certain complicated system of behavior which is partially dictated by society and partially dictated by the expectations or the wishes one nurses oneself.
**[00:3:31]** Now, this is not the real personality in spite of the fact that people will assure you that it is all quite real and quite honest. Yet it is not. Now, such a performance or, say, the performance of the persona is quite all right as long as you know that you are not identical with the way in which you appear. But, If you are unconscious of this fact, then you get into sometimes very disagreeable conflicts. Namely, people can’t help noticing that at home, for instance, you are quite different from what you appear to be in public. And people who don’t know it stumble over it in the end. They deny that they are like that, but they are like that. They are it. And then you don’t know now which is the real man. Is he the man as he is at home or in intimate relations? Or is he the man that appears in public? It is a question of check and hide.
**[00:4:37]** Often. It is such a… Occasionally there is such a difference that you would always be able to speak of the double personality. And the more that is pronounced, the more people are neurotic. They get neurotic because they have two different ways. They contradict themselves all the time. And in as much as they are unconscious of themselves, they don’t know it. They think they are all one. Everybody sees that there are two. And some know him only from one side. Others know him only from the other side. And then there are situations that clash because the way you are creates certain situations with people in your relations, and these two situations don’t chime. They are just dissonances. And the more that is the case, the more people are neurotic.
EVANS:
**[00:05:39]** Actually, would you say that the individual may even have more than two personas? In other words, could he possibly…
JUNG:
Oh, rarely. You know, we can’t afford it very well to play more than two roles. But there are cases, for instance, where people have up to five different personalities. In cases of dissociation of personality. Where, for instance, the one person, call it person A, doesn’t know of the existence of the person B. But B knows of A. Or there may be a third personality, C, that doesn’t know of the two others. You see, there are such cases in literature. But they are rare. Very rare. The ordinary case is just an ordinary dissociation of a personality. One calls that a systematic dissociation in contradistinction to the chaotic or systematic dissociation, you find it schizophrenia.
EVANS:
**[00:06:46]** Now, you distinguish between the term persona and the term ego. In other words, as you see them, they’re two different things. Now, what is the difference between the term ego, as you see it, and the term persona?
Well, you see, the ego is supposed to be the representative of the real person. But as I say, for instance, in the case where B knows of A, but A doesn’t know of B. In that case, one would say the ego is more on the side of C. Because the ego has a more complete knowledge. And A is a split-off personality.
EVANS:
**[00:07:26]** Now, you also use the term self. Now, the word self, then, would this have a different meaning than, say, ego or persona?
JUNG:
Oh, yes. You see, when I say self, then you mustn’t think of I, myself. Because that is only your empirical self. And that is covered by the term ego. But when it is a matter of the self, then it is a matter of a personality that is more complete than the ego. Because the ego only consists of what you are conscious of. What you know to be yourself. For instance, you know that you are, in our example, B that knows A, when A doesn’t know B, B is relatively in the position of the self. Namely, the self is on the one side, the ego is on the other side, the unconscious personality, which everybody is in the possession of, everybody. Not in the possession, very often it is just the other way around, that the unconscious is in possession of consciousness. But that is a different case.
**[00:08:41]** Now, you see, while I am talking, I am conscious of what I say. I am conscious of myself, yet, only to a certain extent. Quite a lot of things happen once I make gestures. I am not conscious of them. They happen unconsciously. You can see them. I may say or use words, and I can’t remember at all having used those words, or even at the moment, I am not conscious of them. So, any amount of unconscious things occur in my conscious condition. I am never wholly conscious of myself. While I am trying, for instance, to elaborate an argument. At the same time, there are unconscious processes that continue perhaps a dream, which I have had last night. Or a part of myself thinks of God knows what. Of a trip I am going to take, or of such and such people I have seen, or when I am at the, say, writing a paper, I am continuing writing that paper in my mind without knowing it.
**[00:10:02]** You can discover these things, say, in dreams, or, if you are clever, in immediate observation of an individual, then you see in the gestures or in the expression in the face that there is enough, what one calls, something behind consciousness. So that you have finally the feeling, well, that man has something up his sleeve. And you can even ask him now, what are you really thinking of? You are thinking all the time something else, yet he is not conscious of it. Or he may be.
There are, of course, great individual differences. There are individuals who have amazing knowledge of themselves, of the things that go on in themselves. But even those people wouldn’t be capable of knowing what is going on in their own conscious. For instance, they are not conscious of the fact that while they live a conscious life all the time, a myth is played in the conscious. A myth that extends over centuries. Namely, stream of archetypal ideas that goes on through one individual through the centuries. It is like a continuous stream. And that comes into the daylight in the great movements.
**[00:11:38]** Say, in political movements, or in spiritual movements. For instance, in the time before Reformation people dreamt of great change. And that’s the reason why such great reformation could be predicted. If somebody has been clever enough to see what is going on in people’s mind, in the unconscious mind, would be able to predict it. For instance, I have predicted the Nazi rising in Germany through the observation of my German patients. They had dreams in which the whole thing was anticipated, and with considerable detail. I was absolutely certain in the years before Hitler, before Hitler came in the beginning could say in the year 1919. I was sure that something was threatening in Germany, something very big and very catastrophic. And I only knew it through the observation of the unconscious.
You see there is something very particular in the different nations. This is a peculiar fact that the archetype of the anima, plays a very great role in Western literature—French and Anglo-Saxon, not in Germany. There are exceedingly few examples in Germany where the anima plays a role. You know that simply comes from the fact that not one woman is buried, unless she is buried as [?] at least. She must have a title, otherwise, she hasn’t existed.
**[00:13:43]** And so, you see, it is just as if, now mind you, this is a bit drastic, but it illustrates my point. In Germany, there are no women. There is Frau Doktor, Frau Professor, the Grandmother, the mother-in-law, the grandfather, the father, the son, the daughter, the sister, the [?]. The woman doesn’t exist anymore. It is the idea. Now that is an enormous, important fact which shows that in the German mind, there is going on a particular myth, something very particular. And the psychologists really should look out for these things. But they, they prefer to think that I am a prophet.
EVANS:
**[00:14:47]** Now, just in the same context of Germany, this is of course a very interesting and remarkable set of statements here. How would you look at Hitler in his light? Would you see him as a personification, a symbol of the father?
JUNG:
Oh, no, no. Not at all. No, you see, I couldn’t possibly explain that very complicated fact that Hitler presents. It is complicated, you know, he’s a hero figure. And the hero figure is far more important than any father that have ever existed. Much broader than the immediate father figure. No, he wasn’t a father at all. He was a hero in the German myth. And, mind you, a religious hero. He was a savior. He was meant to be a savior. That is why they put his photo upon the altars. Somebody declared on his tombstone that he is happy that his eyes have beheld Hitler. And now he can lie in peace. Oh, he’s just a hero myth, you know.
EVANS:
**[00:16:04]** Now, getting back to the idea of the self, and the self incorporates these unconscious factors.
JUNG:
The self is merely a term that designates the whole personality. The whole personality of man is indescribable. His consciousness can be described. His unconscious cannot be described because the unconscious, as I must repeat myself, is always unconscious. It is really unconscious. It really does not know it. And so we don’t know our unconscious personality. We have hints. We have certain ideas. But we don’t know it really. Nobody can say where man ends. That is the beauty of it, you know. It’s very interesting. The unconscious of man can reach God knows where. There we are going to make discoveries.
EVANS:
**[00:17:08]** Now, another set of ideas which, of course, are very, very well known to the world that, of course, you have originated, center around the terms introversion and extroversion. I know that you’re aware of the fact that these terms have now become so widely known that the man on the street is using these terms constantly describing his wife or his friends and so on and so forth. It’s become the most, probably the most used psychological concept by the layman that we have.
JUNG:
Oh, like the word complex. I have invented it too. Social experiments. Well, you see, it is simply practical. Because there are certain people who definitely are more influenced by their surroundings than by their own intentions. While there are other people who are more influenced by the subjective factor. Now, you see, the subjective factor, that’s very characteristic, was understood by Freud as a sort of pathological autoerotism.
**[00:18:17]** Now, this is a mistake. You know, the psyche has two conditions, two important conditions. One is the environmental influence. And the other is the given fact of the psyche as it is born. The psyche is by no means tabula rasa. We are a definite mixture and combination of genes. And they are there from the very first moment of our life. And they give a definite character, even to the little child. And that is a subjective factor looked at from the outside. Now, if you look at it from the inside, then it is just so as if you would observe the world. When you observe the world, you see people, you see houses, you see the sky, you see tangible objects. But when you observe yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images, generally known as fantasies.
**[00:19:21]** Yet these fantasies are facts. It is a fact that a man has such and such a fantasy. And it is such a tangible fact, for instance, that when a man has a certain fantasy, another man may lose his life. Or a bridge is built. These houses were all fantasies. Everything you do here, all of the houses, everything was fantasy to begin with. And fantasy has a proper reality. That is not to be forgotten. Fantasy is not nothing. It is of course not a tangible object. But it is a fact nevertheless. It is a form of energy. Despite the fact we can’t measure it. It is a manifestation of something. And that is a reality. That is just a reality as, for instance, the peace treaty of Versailles or something like that. It is no more. You can’t show it. But it has been a fact. And so the psychical events are facts, are realities. And when you observe the stream of images within, you observe an aspect of the world, of the world within. Because the psyche, you know, if you understand it as a phenomenon that takes place in so-called living bodies, then it is a quality of matter.
**[00:21:04]** Our body consists of matter. We discover that this matter has another aspect, namely a psychic aspect. And so, it is simply the world from within, seen from within. It is just as if we were seeing into another aspect of matter. This is an idea that is not my invention. The old Democritus already said, talked of the spiritus insertus atomis. Namely, the spirit that is inserted in atoms. That means, psyche is a quality that appears in matter. Doesn’t matter whether we understand it or not. But this is the conclusion we come to. If we draw conclusions without prejudices.
And so, you see, the man who is going by the external world, by the influence of the external world, say, society, or perceptions, sense perceptions, thinks that he is more valid, you know, because this is valid, this is real. And the man who goes by the subjective factor is not valid because subjective factor is nothing. No, that man is just as well-based. Because he is based, basing himself upon the world from within. And so he is quite right, even if he says, oh, this is nothing but my fantasy. Of course, that is the introvert. And as the introvert is always afraid of the external world, he will tell you, when you ask him, he will be apologetic about it.
**[00:22:59]** He will say, of course, yes, I know all my fantasies. And he has always resentment. And as the world in general, particularly America, is extroverted like hell, the introvert has no place. Because he doesn’t know that he beholds the world from within. And that gives him dignity. And that gives him certainty. Because it is, nowadays particularly, the world hangs on a thin thread. And that is the psyche of man. Assume that certain fellows in Moscow lose their nerve or their common sense for a bit. And the whole world is in fire and flames. It is, nowadays, we are not threatened by elementary catastrophes. There is no such thing as an H-bomb. That is all man is doing.
**[00:24:13]** We are the great danger. The psyche is the great danger. What if something goes wrong with the psyche? You see? And so, you see, it is demonstrated to us in our days what the power of the psyche is of man. How important it is to know something about it. But we know nothing about it. Nobody would give credit to the idea that the psychical processes of the ordinary man have any importance whatever. One thinks, oh, he has just what he has in his head. It is all from his surroundings. He is taught such and such a thing. And particularly if he is well-housed and well-fed, then he has no idea. That is the great mistake. Because he is just that as which he is born. And he is not born as Tabula Rasa, but as a reality.
EVANS:
**[00:25:19]** Now, of course, one of the very common, I think, misconceptions of your work among some of the writers of America has been that they have sort of characterized your discussions of introversion and extroversion as suggesting that the world was made up of only two kinds of people. Introverts on one hand and extroverts on the other. And I am sure you have been aware of it in many of our people looking at me this way. And, of course, we would like to comment about that.
In other words, would you perceive the world being made up of only people or extreme introverts? People that are extreme extroverts?
JUNG:
Well, Bismarck once said, God may protect me against my friends. With my enemies, I can deal myself alone. You know, you know how people are. They catch a word and then everything is schematized along that word. There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum. Those are only terms to designate a certain penchant, a certain tendency. For instance, the tendency to be more influenced by environmental influences or more influenced by the subjective facts. That’s all. And, you see, there are people who are fairly well balanced and are just as much influenced from within as they are from without. Just as little. And so, with all the finer classifications, you know, they are only a sort of point of repair, points for orientation.
**[00:27:11]** Certainly, then, this whole matter of extremes, introvert and extroversion, is just as you say, it’s sort of a scheme, a schematic approach to sort of hang an idea on an approach. But it would be, as you say, ridiculous to say that…
JUNG:
You see, my whole scheme of typology is merely a sort of orientation. Namely, there is such a factor as introversion. There is such a factor as extroversion. The classification of individuals means nothing. Nothing at all. This is only the instrumentarium for the practical psychologist to explain, for instance, a husband to a wife, or vice versa. For instance, it is very often the case, one could almost say, it is almost a rule, but I don’t want to make too many rules, you see, in order not to be schematic, that an introvert marries an extrovert for compensation. Or another type marries the countertype to complement himself, for instance.
EVANS:
**[00:28:26]** Well, Dr. Jung, of course, tied in with your typology and quotation marks of introversion and extroversion, we, of course, know of your concepts of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. And, of course, it would be very interesting to hear some expansion of the meaning of these particular terms as related to the introvert-extrovert dichotomy.
JUNG:
Well, there is quite a simple explanation of these terms, and it shows, at the same time, how I arrived at such a typology. Namely, sensation tells you that there is something. Thinking, roughly speaking, tells you what it is. Feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not, to be accepted or not accepted or rejected. And intuition out there is a difficulty. You don’t know, ordinarily, how intuition works. So, when a man has a hunch, you can’t tell exactly how he got at that hunch or where that hunch comes from. It is something funny about intuition.
**[00:29:53]** I will tell you a little story. I had two patients. The man was a sensation type, and the woman was an intuitive type. Of course, they felt attraction. And so they took a little boat and went out to the lake of Zurek. And there were those birds that dive after fish, you know. And then, after a certain time, they come up again, and you can’t tell where they come up. And so they began to bet who was the first to see the bird. Now, you would think that the one who observes reality very carefully, the sensation type, would, of course, win out. Not at all. The woman won the bet. Completely. She was beating him on all points. Because, by intuition, she knew it before. Now, how is that possible?
Well, sometimes, you know, you can really find out how it works by finding the intermediate links. It is a perception, by intermediate links, and You only get the result of that whole chain by associations. Sometimes you succeed in finding out. But more often you don’t. So, my definition is intuition is a perception by ways or means of the unconscious. That is as near as I can get.
**[00:31:43]** Now, this is a very important function because when you live under primitive conditions, a lot of unpredictable things are likely to happen. And there you need your intuition because you cannot possibly tell by your perceptions, by your sense perceptions, what there is going to happen. For instance, you are traveling in primeval force. You only see for a few steps ahead. You go by the compass, perhaps, and you don’t know what there is ahead. It is uncharted country. If you use your intuition, then you have hunches. And when you live under such primitive conditions, you instantly are aware of hunches.
For instance, there are places that are favorable. There are places that are not favorable. You can’t tell for your life what it is. But you better follow these hunches. Because anything can happen. Quite unforeseen things. For instance, at the end of a long day, you approach a river. You don’t know that there is a river. Yet, when you come to the river, that is quite unexpected. For miles, there is no human habitation. You cannot swim across. It is all full of crocodiles. So what? You see?
**[00:33:14]** Now, such an obstacle hasn’t been foreseen. But it may be that you have had a hunch that you remained in the last likely spot and that you wait for the following day that you can build a raft or something of the sort. Or look out for possibilities. You, for instance, you also can have intuitions in what happens in our jungle called a city. You can have a hunch that something is going wrong. Particularly when you are driving an automobile. For instance, it is a day where nurses appear in the street. And they always try to get something interesting like a suicide, you know, to be run over. That’s more marvelous, apparently.
And then, you know, you get a peculiar feeling. And at the next corner, there is a second nurse that runs in front of the automobile. You see? A duplicity of cases, you know. So, you see, we have constantly warnings, hints, slight feeling of uneasiness, uncertainty, fear. Now under primitive circumstances, you will pay attention to these things. They mean something. With us in our man-made, absolutely, apparently, safe conditions, we don’t need that function so very much. Yet, we still use it.
**[00:35:26]** So, you find intuitive types, for instance, amongst bankers, Wall Street men. They follow hunches. You know, gamblers of all descriptions. You find the type very frequently among doctors because it helps them in their prognosis. Sometimes a case can look quite normal as it were, and you don’t foresee any complications. Yet an inner voice tells you, now look out, here is something not quite all right, you know. You cannot tell why. And how. But we have a lot of subliminal perceptions, you know. Sense perceptions. And from those, we probably draw a good deal of our intuitions. But that is perception by the way of the unconscious. And you can observe that with intuitive types.
You see, intuitive types very often do not perceive by their eyes or by their ears. They perceive by intuition. For instance, once it happened that I had a woman patient in the morning at 9 o’clock. And, you see, I often smoke my pipe and have a certain smell of tobacco in the room of a cigar. And so she came and said, but you begin early. I said, you call it early at 9 o’clock? She said, no, you must have seen somebody at 8 o’clock. I said, how do you know? She said, there had been a man there that had come at eight o ‘clock already. Then she said, oh, well, I just had a hunch there must have been a gentleman with you this morning. I said, but how do you know it was a gentleman? she said, oh, well, I just had the impression the atmosphere it was just like a gentleman here.
**[00:37:42]** All the time, you know, the ashtray was under her nose and there was a half-smoked cigar. But she wouldn’t notice it. So, you see, the intuitive is the type that doesn’t see. the stumbling block before his feet, but has walked for 10 miles.
EVANS:
Do you make a distinction between an intuitive extrovert and an intuitive introvert?
JUNG:
Yes. All these types can be on the extrovert or introverted line.
EVANS:
For example, more specifically, what would be an example or a difference between an intuitive extrovert and an intuitive introvert?
JUNG:
Well, you know, you have chosen somewhat difficult case, you know, because one of the most difficult types is the intuitive introvert. The intuitive extrovert you find among hunters, packers, gamblers. That is quite understandable. But the introvert variety is more difficult because he has intuitions as to the subjective factor, namely the inner world. And, of course, that is now very difficult to understand because what he sees are most uncommon things. And he doesn’t like to talk of them if he’s not a fool because he would spoil his own game by telling what he sees because people won’t understand it.
**[00:39:24]** For instance, once I had a patient, a young woman about 27 or 28, and her first words were when I had seated her, she said, you know, doctor, I come to you because I have a snake in my abdomen. I said, what? Yes, a snake, a black snake coiled up right in the bottom of my abdomen. And I must have made a rather bewildered face at her. And she said, you know, I don’t mean it literally, but I should say it was a snake.
Now, you see, our further conversation a little later was that she said that was about in the middle of our treatment that only lasted for ten consultations. She had foretold me I come ten times and then it’s all right. I said, how do you know? Oh, I got a hunch. And really, about the fifth or sixth hour, she said, doctor, I must tell you the snake has risen. It is now about here. Hunch. And then on the tenth day, I said, now, this is our last hour. And do you feel cured? And she said, beaming. She said, you know, this morning it was a snake. It came up and came out of my mouth and the head was golden.
**[00:41:12]** Those were her last words. You see, that same girl when it comes to reality, she came to me because she couldn’t hear the step of her feet anymore. Because she walked on air. Literally. She couldn’t hear it. That frightened her. And when she came to me, I asked her for her address. And then she said, oh, Pension, so and so. Well, it is not just a car called Pension, but it is a sort of Pension. And it is, well, I never had heard of it. I’m curious. I never have heard of that place. Well, it’s a very nice place she said. Uh, curious enough, there are only young girls there. Very nice. And very lively young girls. And they have a merry time. I often wish they would invite me to their merry evenings.
And I said, but, they amuse themselves all alone. Oh, no, there are plenty of young gentlemen coming in. And, uh, they have a beautiful time. But they never invite me. It turned out that it was a private brothel. And she was a perfectly decent girl, you know, of a very good family. Not from here. She had found a place. I don’t know how. And, and she was utterly unaware that those were all prostitutes. I said, for heavens sake, you fell Into a very dark place. You hasten to get out of it. You see that is, not her sensation. She doesn’t see reality. But she had hunches like anything. And they came off.
**[00:43:13]** Now, you see, such a person cannot possibly speak of her experiences. Because everybody would think she’s absolutely crazy. I myself was quite shocked when I thought, for heaven’s sake, is that case a schizophrenia because you don’t hear that kind of speech, but she assumed that the old man of course knows everything and he even understands such kind of language. So, you see if or when the intuitive perceives that he would be misunderstood and so they learn to keep things to themselves and you hardly ever hear them talking of these things. That is the greatest advantage, but it is an enormous advantage in another way.
Not to speak of the experience of God in that respect but also in human relations for instance they come into the presence of somebody they don’t know. Certainly they have inner images. And those inner images give them a more or less complete information about the psychology of the partner. This case can also happen that they come into the presence of somebody who they don’t know at all, not from Adam, and they know an important piece out of the biography of that person. And are not aware of it and tell the story and then the fat is in the fire.
**[00:45:04]** You see, so the introvert, the intuitive has in a way a very difficult life. Although one of the most interesting lives, but it is difficult often to get into their confidence, you know because the things that that are interesting to them or are vital to them are utterly strange to the ordinary individual. That psychologists should know of such things, you see, when people make psychology as a psychologist ought to do, well, the very first question, is he extroverted or is he introverted?
If we look at entirely different things. Is he a sensation type? Is he intuitive type? Is he thinking? Is he feeling that? Because you see these things are complicated. That they are still more complicated because the introverted thinker for instance is compensated by extroverted feeling. By inferior extroverted archaic extroverted feeling. So, an introverted thinker may be very crude in his feeling. Like, for instance, the introverted philosopher that is always carefully avoiding women, will be married by his cook in the end.
EVANS:
**[00:46:40]** Now, in other words, then we can take your introvert-extrovert categories and in a sense go through… describing a sensation-introvert type, sensation-extrovert type, thinking-introvert type, thinking-extrovert type, and so on. And each case, it stems from really, not real category, but simply, as you say, an approach, something to sort of help us study a model.
JUNG:
It is just a sort of a skeleton to which you have to add the flesh, or say it is… a country mapped out you know by triangulation points and that doesn’t mean the country consists of triangulation points yeah that is only in order to have an idea of the distances and so it is a means to an end it only makes sense such a scheme when you have when you deal with practical cases.
EVANS:
**[00:47:49]** Of course, you’re familiar with the work of Dr. J.B. Ryan at Duke University. And, of course, some of his work in extrasensory perception and clairvoyance, as he calls it, mental telepathy, you know, and so on and so forth. Some of the descriptions in his work sound… quite a bit at times, like intuitive function operation. And in terms of your knowledge of this work, would you say that a person who has clairvoyance, in a sense, would then be an intuitive type? A person in his experiment is more likely to…
JUNG:
That’s quite probable. Or it can be a sensation type. Say, an extraverted sensation type that is very much influenced by the unconscious. Because he has introverted intuition in his unconscious. You see, there are two groups, the rational group and the irrational group. The rational group is thinking and feeling, because the ideal thinking is rational result. Feeling also a rational result, rational values. That is differentiated feeling. Whereas sensation must need to be irrational because it may not prejudice facts.
**[00:49:20]** You, see? It shall not prejudice facts. The real ideal perception is that you have an accurate perception of the things as they are without addition or corrections. On the other side, the intuition does not look at the things as they are. That is prison, that is anathema to the intuition. It looks, oh, ever so shortly at the things as they are and makes off into an unconscious process at the end of which we have seen something nobody else would have seen. Now so we see these people who yield the best results are always those people where introverted or introverted intuition comes in. But you see that is a side aspect of it it’s not interesting.
There’s is question… not a question, far more interesting, namely, the terms they use. Ryan himself uses the pre-recognition, telepathy, etc. They mean nothing at all. They’re words. But he thinks he has said something when he says telepathy. It means nothing. It means nothing at all.
EVANS:
**[00:50:50]** The word itself is not a description of the process. Now, of course, a lot of the things that you’re describing, I think, often scientists will say this is due to chance, chance occurrences, chance factors. And Ryan, in his own work, used statistical methods. We find this happening more often than would be expected by chance.
JUNG:
Well, you see, he proves that it is more than chance. It is statistically possible. And that is the important point. And that hasn’t been contradicted. You see, there was such a poor sap that happened in England. That man said, oh, Ryan, well, that is nothing but guesswork. It is guessing. What you call guessing, a hunch is guessing. But that means nothing. You see, the point is that it is more than merely probable. It is beyond chance. That is the great problem. But, you know, people hate such problems they can’t deal with.
EVANS:
They’re not concrete. They’re not in front of them.
JUNG:
Even Ryan doesn’t understand our argument in that respect. Because it is a relativation. Now I’m going to say something which in these sacred rooms is anathema. Relativation of time and space through the psyche. That’s the fact. That is what Reinhardt has made evident. Now swallow that. Well, that’s difficult.
EVANS:
**[00:52:50]** Well, may I go a little further and per some of your recent work, which is indeed very profound and it is not too well known to many of our students as yet. And of course this is… I’m referring now to the concept of synchronicity which you have discussed and which would have some relevance at this point in our discussion. Would you care to comment a little bit on this concept?
JUNG:
That is awfully complicated. One wouldn’t know where to begin. Of course, this kind of thinking has been started long ago. And when Ryan brought out his results, I thought now we have at least a more or less dependable basis to argue on. But the argument was not understood at all because it’s really very, very difficult.
You know there are plenty of facts in your probational scale conscious, where you come across cases of a very peculiar kind, of parallel events, namely that… say, I have a certain thought of a certain definite subject… is occupying my attention. At the same time, something else quite independently happens, that portrays just that… thought. Now this is utter nonsense looked at from a causal point of view. That it is not nonsense is made evident by the results of Ryan’s experiments. There is a probability it is something more than chance that such a case occurs.
**[00:55:27]** Now I have I never made statistical experiments to… except one in the way of Ryan. I have made one for another purpose. But I have come across quite a number of cases where it was most astounding to find that two causal chains happened at the same time, but independent upon each other, so that you could say they have nothing to do with each other. Of course, it’s quite clear. For instance, just so I speak of a red car, and at that moment a red car comes here you see? Now, I hadn’t seen it. It was impossible because it was behind the building. In this moment, the red car appears. Now, this is… Oh, that’s mere chance. The Ryan’s experiment proves that these cases are not mere chances.
Of course, many of these things are occurrences where we cannot apply such an argument, otherwise it would be superstitious. We can’t say, now this car has appeared because here was… the remarks have been made about the red car. It’s not cause and effect. Or this is a miracle that the red car appears. It is not, it is chance, just chance. But these chances happen more often than chance allows. And that shows that there is something behind it. So we see, Ryan has a whole institute and with many co-workers. And as the means, we had no means here, you know, and I had no means to make such an experiment, otherwise I probably would have done them. But this just was physically impossible. So I had to content myself with the observation of facts.
JUNG:
**[00:57:48]** I began an examination of the human attitudes, namely how our consciousness functions. I couldn’t help seeing, for instance, the difference between Freud and Adler. Typical difference. The one assumes that things evolve along the line of the sex instinct. The other assumes that things evolve along the line of power drive. And there I was. I was in between the two. I can’t see the justification of Freud’s view. At others, it seems the same for Adler. And I knew that there are plenty of other ways in which things could be envisaged. And so, I considered my scientific duty to examine first the condition of the human consciousness that is the originator of ways of envisaging the factor that produces attitudes, conscious attitudes towards certain phenomena.
So, when you know, for instance, that there are \ people who see the difference between red and green, you can take it for a fact that everybody sees that difference. Not at all. There are tales of Daltonism and so on, you know. The one sees this, the other sees that, and I tried to find out what the principal differences were. And that is the book about the types. And so first is introverted and extroverted attitude, then the functional aspects, namely which of the four functions is predominant. Now, mind you, these four functions were not a scheme I had invented and applied to psychology. On the contrary, I took quite a long time to discover that there is another type, but the thinking type. I thought my type is, of course, that is human. It is not.
**[01:00:25]** There are other people who decide the same problems I had to decide in an entirely different way. They look at things in an entirely different way. They have entirely different values. There are, for instance, feeling types. And so, after a while, I discovered that there are intuitive types. They gave me much trouble. It took me over a year to become somewhat clear about the existence of intuitive types. And the last and the most unexpected was the sensation type. And only later on I saw that those are naturally the four aspects of conscious orientation. You can increase the number of principles. But I found the most simple way is the way I told you. As the division by four is a simple and natural division of a circle.
I didn’t know the symbolism of this particular classification. Only when I studied the archetypes, I became aware that this is a very important archetype that has played an enormous role. I also found in the study of the types that it gives us a certain lead as to the personal nature of the unconscious, the personal quality of the unconscious in a given case, but to take an extravert. Well, his unconscious… has then an introverted quality because all the extraverted qualities are played in consciousness and the introvert is left to be unconscious, therefore it has introverted qualities and so on with the functions the same. That gave me a lead of the diagnostic value. It helped me to understand my patients.
EVANS:
**[01:02:46]** Well, Professor Jung, we have been discussing many of the very fundamental ideas in your theories, such as anima and animus, and, of course, being representative of the whole idea of archetypes, as you explained it so interestingly. And we talked a little bit about this whole conception of the ego and the self and the persona as they are involved in all of this. And as we speak, of course, it begun to point to the direction of the sort of question that is so important as we try to understand the individual. And this centers around the problem of motivation, why the person does what he does. Now, to a great degree, you’ve already talked about this when you talked about archetypes and this whole matter. Now, in the work of Dr. Freud, he spoke of libido as an energy, and earlier we spoke of libido and the fact that you thought that it was more than just sexual energy. You thought it could be something much broader. Now, you have certain principles about psychic energy which are indeed very provocative. Now, one of these principles is, I believe, you refer to as the principle of entropy.
JUNG:
**[01:03:53]** Well, you know, only I allude to it. The main point is, you know, the standpoint of energetics as applied to psychic phenomena. There you have no possibility to measure exactly. So it always remains a sort of an analogy. Freud, for instance, uses the term libido in the sense of a sexual energy. And now that is not quite correct. You see, if it is sexual, then it is a power, like electricity or any other form of manifestation of energy. Now, energy is a concept. Energy is a concept by which you try to express… the analogies of all power manifestations, namely that they have a certain quantity, a certain intensity, and that there is a flow in one direction, namely to the ultimate suspension of the opposites, for instance.
Low, high height, a lake on a mountain flows down until all the water is down, you know, and then it is finished. And so, you see, something similar is the case in psychology that you see from the fact, for instance, we get tired from intellectual work or from consciously living, and then we must sleep in order to restore our powers, and it’s just, as I said, in the night as if the work was done from the lower level to higher level, you know, so that we can work again the next day. Of course, that’s good. That simile is limping too. So it is only in an analogous way that we use the term energy.
**[01:06:23]** And I used it because I wanted to express the fact that the Power manifestation of sexuality is not the only power manifestation. Because you have a lot of time. Say, the drive to conquer or the drive to aggression or something of the sort. There are many forms, you see. For instance, they take animals, the way they are building their nest, the urge of the traveling bird, you know, that migrates. Now, all they are driven by a sort of energy manifestation. You see, the meaning of the word sexuality would be entirely gone if everything is that.
So Freud himself thought that this is not applicable everywhere and later on he corrected himself by assuming that there are also ego drives. You see. Now that is something else. That’s another manifestation. Now in order not to presume or to prejudice things, I speak simply of energy. An energy. It is a quantity of energy that can manifest via sexuality or via any other instance. And that is the main feature. Not the existence of one single power. Because that is not wantable.
EVANS:
**[01:08:13]** Now, another thing about motivation or the condition which arouse and direct and sustain the individual, there seems to be two views that we find in much of our psychology in America today. Now, one might be called a historical view, where we try to look in the history and development of the individual for answers to why he’s doing certain things at the moment. Then we have another view, which was postulated and discussed by Dr. Kurt Lewin, which is sort of a field theory. He thinks that the history, the past, is not important motivation, but all conditions which affect the individual at that moment, we can predict behavior by knowing all the conditions at that moment, so we don’t have to go back to the past to understand why the person does what he does. Now, would you think that this present field idea of Dr. Lewin has any virtue? Does it make any sense?
JUNG:
**[01:09:08]** Well, obviously, you see, I always insist that even chronic neurosis has its true cause in the moment. Now, the diagnosis is made every day by the wrong attitude the individual has. But that wrong attitude is a historical fact. That means to be explained historically by things that have happened in the past. But that is one sided too because all psychological facts are oriented. not only to a cause, but also to a certain goal. They are, in a way, teleological. They serve a certain purpose. And so a wrong attitude can have originated in a certain way long ago, but it wouldn’t exist today anymore if there were not immediate causes and immediate purposes that keep it alive today. So a neurosis can be finished.
Certainly, on a certain day, despite of all causes, one has observed in the beginning of the war, the cases of compulsion neurosis had lasted for many years, certainly were cured. Because they got into an entirely new condition, it is like a shock. You see that with shock. Schizophrenia can be vastly improved by a shock. Because that’s a new condition, it is a very shocking thing that shocks them out of their habitual attitude and then they are no more in it and then the whole thing collapses, the whole system that has been built up for years.
EVANS:
**[01:11:14]** So in therapy, in working with a patient, you would not say that it’s absolutely imperative to have to reformulate all of his past life in order to help him with his present neurosis. You feel that you could deal with him at the moment with his problem as it is at this time, and it’s not necessary to go back and probe into things that happened to him during his first infection or third year of life.
JUNG:
You see, there is no system about it in therapy. In therapy, you treat the patient as he is in the present moment, irrespective of causes and such things. That is all more or less theoretical. There are cases who know just as much about their own neuroses as I know about it, in a way. In such cases, I can start right away with posing the problem. For instance, there is a case, a professor of philosophy, and he imagines that he has cancer. He shows me several dozen X-ray plates that prove that there is no cancer. And he says, of course I have no cancer. But nevertheless, I’m afraid I could have one. I have consulted so many surgeons and they all assume there is none. And I know there is none. But I might have one, you see, and that’s enough.
**[01:12:44]** Now, you see, such a case can stop from one moment to the other. He simply stops thinking such a foolish thing. But that is exactly what he cannot do. And in such a case, I say, well, it’s perfectly plain to you. It’s nonsense what you believe. Now, why are you forced to believe such nonsense? What is the power that makes you think such a thing against your free will? You know it is nonsense, and why should you think it? Or what for should you think it? And what is that power that makes you think such a thing? It’s like a possession, you know? Exactly. It’s like a demon in him that makes him think like that, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t want it.
Then you have the problem. That is the problem of an intellectual man. And then I say, now, you see, you don’t know. You have no answer. I have no answer. Now what are we going to do? Now we can see what you’re dreaming. Because the dream is a manifestation of the unconscious side. Now you never have thought of the unconscious side. So I must explain to him that he has an unconscious. And that the dream is a manifestation of it. And if we succeed in analyzing the dream, we might get an idea about that power that makes him think like that.
**[01:14:20]** You see? So, in such a case, one can begin right away with analysis of dreams. And in all cases that are a bit serious, mind you, this is not a simple case, this is a very serious and difficult case, in spite of the simplicity of the phenomenology, of the symptomatology. In all cases, after all the preliminaries as it were, the history of the family, the medical analysis, etc. We come to that question. What is it in your unconscious that makes you wrong? That hinders you to think normally? And then we are there where we can begin with the observation of the unconscious.
And then, day by day, one goes on by the data the unconscious produces. You see, we discuss the dream and that gives a new surface to the whole problem and we will have another dream and the next dream gives again an answer because the unconscious is in a compensated relation to consciousness. And after a while, we take the full picture. And if he has the full picture and has the necessary moral stamina, well, then he can be cured. But in the end, it is a moral question whether a man applies what he had learned or not.
EVANS:
**[01:16:06]** So you see that in a sense, in this situation, the unconscious plays a very important part. the unconscious which has found in the dream. But if you see it then, what you have found in the dream is not necessarily then an image or symbol of what has happened in the past in his particular life.
JUNG:
Not at all. It is just a symbol. Or the symbol is not, you see, that is a special term. It is the manifestation of the situation of the unconscious, looked at from the unconscious. You see, I tell you, for instance, something which is my personal or subjective view. And if I ask myself, how are you really quite convinced of it? Well, I must admit I have certain doubts. There are certain doubts. Not in the moment when I tell you, but these doubts are in the unconscious. And when I have a dream about it, these doubts come to the forefront in my dreams. And that is the way the unconscious looks at the thing. It is just so as if the unconscious will say, oh yes, that’s all very well what you are stating, but you omit entirely such and such a point.
EVANS:
**[01:17:19]** If the unconscious acts on this present situation, now looking at this thing in broad motivational terms, now this effect of the unconscious is not something which is a result of repression in the same way the orthodox psychoanalysts at it all, then, as you said.
JUNG:
No, it may be, you know, that what the unconscious has to say is so disagreeable that one prefers not to listen. And in most cases, people would be probably less erotic. if they could admit the things. These things are always a bit difficult, or disagreeable, or inconvenient, or something of the sort. So there is always a certain amount of repression. But that is not the main thing. The main thing is that they are really unconscious. And you see, if you are unconscious about certain things that ought to be conscious, then you’re dissociated. And then you are a man whose left hand never knows what the right is doing. And counteracts or interferes with the right hand. Now such a man is hampered all over the place.
EVANS:
**[01:18:31]** Now, looking at the unconscious in this way, of course, this is a, as you say, it’s unconscious, how can we know about it? But trying to just, for that moment, just as an illustration. Would a particular individual, we might say, who has been brought up in a culture such as the culture of India, a particular individual in India, if we could examine his unconscious… Would it be in many respects, say, similar to the unconscious of a particular individual who, say, lived in Switzerland all his life? In other words, you spoke earlier about these universals. Would there be a great deal of equivalence between the unconscious of a particular individual who’s been raised in one culture and another individual who’s raised in an entirely different culture?
JUNG:
**[01:19:14]** Well, you see, that question is also complicated because when we speak of the unconscious, we almost should say, which unconscious? Namely, is it that personal unconsciousness which is characteristic for a certain person, for a certain individual?
EVANS:
Yes, so that you have the personal unconsciousness. This is one unconscious. And you call that the personal.
JUNG:
And in treatment, for instance, in the treatment of neurosis, you have to do with that personal unconsciousness for quite a while. And then only dreams come that show that the collective unconscious is touched upon. Now, as long as there is material for personal nature, you have to deal with the personal unconscious. But when you get to, say, to a question, to a problem, which is no more merely personal, but also collective, you get collective treatment.
EVANS:
**[01:20:18]** Now, the distinction, then, between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious then, is that the personal could be more involved with the immediate life of the individual, and the collective would be universal, would be the same elements of all men.
JUNG:
It would be collective. For instance, you know, every society has collective problems, collective convictions, and so on. Now, we are very much influenced by them. For instance, you belong to a certain political party or to a certain confession. And that can be a serious determinant of your behavior. Now, as long as your personal conflict doesn’t touch upon it, it’s no question, it doesn’t appear. But the moment you transcend your personal sphere and come to your own personal determinants, say, to the question, a political question, or any other social question, which really matters to you, then you are confronted with a collective problem and then you have collective dreams.
EVANS:
**[01:21:29]** I wonder if it would be too presumptuous of me to ask if you could, for the moment, think of an actual case of perhaps a patient or a friend, in which you might show us, rather specifically, how the personal and the collective unconscious were acting, you say, his neurosis, or perhaps in a problem that he may have had at the moment.
JUNG:
Well, you see, there is an enormous amount of personal dreams, for instance, and I couldn’t possibly tell you just a moment before. There are millions of such personal dreams that simply deal, for instance with the fact how your relation is to your father or to your mother or to your wife and so on, with all sorts of individual variations. Now, but suppose a patient comes to that level or that his conflict begins to become really very serious, that his mind might suffer. Then he can have a collective dream in which clearly mythological motives appear. There are plenty of examples in literature. You know, an introduction to the fact of the unconscious, there are such dreams. And that can be.
**[01:23:11]** I remember, for instance, a case that was a well learned man and very rational and he had of course a lot of personal problems and but they got so bad that he got into a very disagreeable relations to his whole surroundings. He was once a member of a society and he got into a brawl with the people of that society, you know. And it was quite shocking. Now, he started with collective dreams. Suddenly he dreamt of things. he had never thought of in his life before, mythological motives, and he thought he was crazy. Because he couldn’t understand it at all. Just as if the whole world were transformed.
Now that is what you see in cases of schizophrenia. That case was not a case of schizophrenia. as examples you can take any of these collective theories I published. There are plenty. At the moment I cannot remember a suitable example. You know, to make it clear, I should tell a long story. Then you see where it applies, otherwise it makes no sense, and then something short. Well, I told you that case of that intuitive girl who certainly came out with the statement that she has a black snake in the belly. Well now, that is a collective symbol. That is not an individual fantasy. That is a collective fantasy. That is very known in India. She has nothing to do with India.
**[01:25:22]** But we have it too which is generally human. But it’s entirely unknown. So that I, even in the first moment, thought, perhaps she’s crazy. But she wasn’t really highly intuitive. It is in India known, it is the basis of a whole philosophical system of tantrism. This is Kundalini. Kundalini is certain. And that is something known to some few specialists. Generally it’s not known that we have a serpent in the abdomen. But that is a collective dream or a collective fantasy.
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