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What Carl Jung was really saying
‘What truly matters in Jung’s message is the understanding that we are ultimately grounded in something infinite and eternal, and that our lives as finite beings, illusory as they be, serve a divine purpose.’ Bernardo Kastrup
In the summer of 1940, despite the tribulations of the time, a meeting took place at Moscia, overlooking Lake Maggiore on the Swiss-Italian border, at which the depth psychologist Carl Gustav Jung gave a surprise extempore talk in response to the main speaker at the event, the Basel mathematician Andreas Speiser.
On this occasion, at the Eranos discussion group founded in 1933 for humanistic and spiritual studies, the subject was ‘the psychology of the Trinity’. Almost apologetically, Jung told his audience: ‘I can formulate my thoughts only as they break out of me. It is like a geyser. Those who come after me will have to put them in order.’
Of course, this remark can be taken with more than a grain of salt, for it belies the thoroughness, even pedantry, with which Jung (1875–1961) put together his material. Yet it does indicate some of the difficulties encountered in readings of his works, particularly those written towards the end of his life.
At that Eranos talk was Anelia Jaffé, who became secretary to the C G Jung Institute, as well as Jung’s personal secretary, and an analytical…
