Jung was led to a confrontation with religious questions by a number of different routes. There were his childhood visions, which brought him face to face with the reality of religious experience and remained with him to the end of his life. There was his insuppressible curiosity concerning everything that had led him to do with the contents of the psyche and its manifestations — the urge to know which characterised his scientific work. And, last but not least, there was his conscience as a physician. He was well aware that the patient’s religious attitude plays a crucial part in the therapy of psychic illnesses. This observation coincided with his discovery that the psyche spontaneously produces images with a religious content, that it is “by nature religious.” It also became apparent to him that numerous neuroses spring from a disregard of this fundamental characteristic of the psyche, especially during the second half of life.
Jung’s concept of religion differed in many respects from traditional Christianity — above all in his answer to the problem of evil and his conception of a God who is not entirely good or kind. From the viewpoint of dogmatic Christianity, Jung was distinctly an “outsider.” For all his worldwide fame, this verdict was forcibly borne in upon him by the reactions to his writings. This grieved him, and here and there in this book he expresses the disappointment of an investigator who felt that his religious ideas were not properly understood. More than once he said grimly, “They would have burned me as a heretic in the Middle Ages!” Only since his death have theologians in increasing numbers begun to say that Jung was indubitably an outstanding figure in the religious history of our century.
Jung explicitly declared his allegiance to Christianity, and the most important of his works deal with the religious problems of the Christian. He looked at these questions from the standpoint of psychology, deliberately setting a bond between it and the theological approach. In so doing he stressed the necessity of understanding and reflecting, as against the Christian demand for faith. He took this necessity for granted, as one of the essential features of life. “I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted to Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force,” he wrote in 1952 to a young clergyman.
This book is the only place in his extensive writings in which Jung speaks of God and his personal experience of God. While he was writing of his youthful rebellion against the church, he once said, “At that time I realised God — for me, at least — was one of the most immediate experiences.” In his scientific works Jung seldom speaks of God; there he is at pains to use the term “the God-image in the human psyche.” This is no contradiction. In the one case his language is subjective, based on inner experience; in the other it is the objective language of scientific inquiry. In the first case he is speaking as an individual, whose thoughts are influenced by passionate, powerful feelings, intuitions, and experiences of a long and unusually rich life; in the second, he is speaking as the scientist who consciously restricts himself to what may be demonstrated and supported by evidence. As a scientist, Jung is an empiricist. When Jung speaks of his religious experiences in this book, he is assuming that his readers are willing to enter into his point of view. His subjective statements will be acceptable only to those who have had similar experiences —or, to put it another way, to those in whose psyche the God-image bears the same or similar features.
Although Jung was active and affirmative in the making of the “autobiography,” for a long time his attitude towards the prospect of its publication remained — quite understandably — highly critical and negative. He rather dreaded the reaction of the public, for one thing because of the candour with which he had revealed his religious experiences and ideas, and for another because the hostility aroused by his book, Answer to Job, was still too close, and the incomprehension or misunderstanding of the world in general was too painful. “I have guarded this material all my life, and have never wanted it exposed to the world; for if it is assailed, I shall be affected even more than in the case of my other books. I do not know whether I shall be so far removed from this world that the arrows of criticism will no longer reach me and that I shall be able to bear the adverse reactions. I have suffered enough from incomprehension and from the isolation one falls into when one says things that people do not understand. If the Job book met with so much misunderstanding, my ‘memoirs’ will have an even more unfortunate fate. The ‘autobiography’ is my life, viewed in the light of the knowledge I have gained from my scientific endeavours. Both are one, and therefore this book makes great demands on people who do not know or cannot understand my scientific ideas. My life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity. All my ideas and all my endeavours are myself. Thus, the ‘autobiography’ is merely the dot on the i.”
During the years in which the book was taking shape a process of transformation and objectivisation was also taking place in Jung. With each successive chapter he moved, as it were, farther away from himself, until at last he was able to see himself as well as the significance of his life and work from a distance. “If I ask the value of my life, I can only measure myself against the centuries and then I must say, Yes, it means something. Measured by the ideas of today, it means nothing.” The impersonality, the feeling of historical continuity expressed in these words, emerges ever more strongly in the course of the book, as the reader will see.
The chapter entitled “The Work,” with its brief survey of the genesis of Jung’s most important writings, is fragmentary. How could this be otherwise, when his collected works comprise nearly twenty volumes? Moreover, Jung never felt any disposition to offer a summary of his ideas — either in conversation or in writing. When he was asked to do so, he replied in his characteristic, rather drastic fashion, “That sort of thing lies entirely outside my range. I see no sense in publishing a condensation of papers in which I went to so much trouble to discuss the subject in detail. I should have to omit all my evidence and rely on a type of categorical statement which would not make my results any easier to understand. The characteristic ruminant activity of ungulate animals, which consists in the regurgitation of what has already been chewed over, is anything but stimulating to my appetite …”
The reader should therefore regard this chapter as a retrospective sketch written in response to a special occasion, and not expect it to be comprehensive.
The short glossary which I have included at the end of the book, at the publisher’s request, will, I hope, be of help to the reader who is not familiar with Jung’s work and terminology. I have taken a small number of the definitions from the “Wörterbuch der Psychologie und ihrer Grenzgebiete,” with the kind permission of its editor, Kurt von Sury, M.D. Wherever possible I have elucidated the concepts of Jungian psychology by quotations from Jung’s works, and have supplemented the dictionary’s definitions in the same way. These quotations must, however, be regarded as no more than suggestive hints. Jung was constantly defining his concepts in new and different ways, for an ultimate definition, he felt, was not possible. He thought it wise to let the inexplicable elements that always clung to psychic realities remain as riddles or mysteries.
A great many persons have helped me with this inspiring and difficult task, have shown unfailing interest during the slow growth of the book, and have furthered its progress by stimulating suggestions and criticism. To all of them I offer heartfelt thanks. Here I shall mention by name only Helen and Kurt Wolff, of Locarno, who conceived the idea of the book and helped to bring that idea to fruition; Marianne and Walther Niehus-Jung, of Küsnacht-Zürich, who throughout the years in which it was taking shape aided me by word and deed; and R. F. C. Hull, of Palma de Mallorca, who gave me advice and help with unflagging patience.
December 1961
ANIELA JAFFÉ
My life is a story of the self-realisation of