Who Was Carl Jung? Part II: Professional Acclaim

When we last left Carl Gustav Jung, he proved himself able to perform at the zenith of academia, earning an M.D. and a doctorate in Psychiatry from the University of Zurich and beginning work under Eugen Bleuler at the Burgholzli Clinic in Switzerland. Bleuler was nearly 20 years Carl’s senior, however they had much in common. Eugen, too, was from a small town near Zurich, and also a University of Zurich trained Psychiatrist. Blueler’s intellectual influences clearly left their imprint on Jung. He encouraged Jung’s research into unconscious mental phenomenon using the Word Association Test. In the process, Jung with the help of his psychiatric colleague Franz Riklin unearthed the empirical scientific evidence for the action of unconscious complexes and the verified some of the ideas put forward by Freud’s repression theory. It was also during this time that Jung married Emma Rauschenbach, with whom he would have five children over the next 11 years.

In 1906, the 31 year-old Jung sent Freud a copy of his book, “Studies in Word Association”. The two met a year later at Freud’s home in Vienna. The landmark spring 1907 meeting lasting 13 hours remains one of the most important moments in psychological intellectual history. After their meeting, Jung and Freud regularly corresponded and their relationship deepened.

Jung experienced significant professional successes in the years that followed. Jung became editor of the Yearbook for Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Research in 1908. Colleagues in America invited him to lecture there and in 1909, Clark University in Massachusetts honored Jung and Freud with honorary doctorates which they received at a lecture series and ceremony that greatly increased the acceptance of Psychoanalysis in the United States. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) elected Jung to become its permanent “Chairman.” Together, Freud and Jung ushered in a new phase for the field of Psychoanalysis in which it became a global community that included Europe, Latin America, and North America.

During the time he worked upon his famous book published in 1912, the “Psychology of the Unconscious,” Jung’s disenchantment with Freud’s insistence upon an exclusively sexual causation for unconscious psychological phenomena grew. By 1913, the relationship fractured beyond the point of repair.  Afterwards, Jung found himself grappling to find his own non-Freudian psychological standpoint. He continued his busy psychoanalytical practice, served in the Swiss army as the commander of internment camp for British soldiers, and wrote the beginning articles that led to the publication of his important book, “Psychological Types.”

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