Are you in for a challenge? You can find the better looking version of this review on my blog: Mystics, Gnostics, alchemists, Buddhists, Taoists, philosophers and many others were preoccupied with understanding the mind better. Jung studied all of them by himself, read anything that he could put his hands on about myths, ancient religions, behavior of the primitives.
He also studied and interpreted his own dreams, taking into account symbols discovered in all the books he read, h You can find the better looking version of this review on my blog: At the time when he became a psychiatrist, nobody really understood much how mental conditions could be treated and they were not even trying to find ways to help the patients.
They were just diagnosing most people with mental conditions as suffering from schizophrenia and considered them freaks, putting them in secluded places so as to keep them from harming themselves or others. Jung regarded his work as a psychiatrist as a challenge, as a way to better understand himself and mind in general and he succeeded greatly at that, becoming a pioneer in treating these conditions through psychoanalysis. Most of his theories are, even if some might not be regarded as entirely correct, really very interesting and intriguing and they are great food for thought.
This book presents how he reached most of his conclusions and how they all presented to him in a way or another through dreams and visions. His continuous struggles and victories to decipher them displayed vastly in this book made me realize how great and superior a mind he had. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away — an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity.
Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. Jung chiefly speaks here of inner experiences, being most certain that these and only these form the prima materia of his scientific work. He is sure that inner experiences also set their seal on the outward experiences that came his way and assumed importance for him in his youth or later on.
He discovered the basis for his theory of persona the mask that we are wearing when interacting with others when he was in primary school, he became conscious of the concept of ego in himself at some point when he was seized with rage that someone had dared to insult him. Most of what he said seemed somehow familiar to me. I have, sometimes in the past, in one moment or another, felt the way he had felt and I was not able to reach a conclusion or put the feeling into words as well as he did. Like the passage below, for instance: As a matter of fact I always had a guilty conscience and was aware of both actual and potential faults.
For that reason I was particularly sensitive to reproofs, since all of them more or less struck home. Although I had not in reality done what I was accused of, I felt that I might have done it. I would even draw up a list of alibis in case I should be accused of something. I felt positively relieved when I had actually done something wrong. Then, at least I knew what my guilty conscience was for.
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- What Is Dreaming and What Does It Tell Us about Memory? [Excerpt] - Scientific American.
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- What Is Dreaming and What Does It Tell Us about Memory? [Excerpt].
Naturally I compensated my inner insecurity by an outward show of security, or — to put it better — the defect compensated itself without the intervention of my will. I will however add this as a spoiler and the rest of the review as well as I feel that I cannot summarize the richness of his ideas in a short text and this review will become way too long if I do not do this.
It is up to you if you choose to read on or not. It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive.
Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. I knew, too, that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.
It exerts a mighty suction which greedily draws everything living into itself; we can only escape from it — for a while — by pressing forward. The past is terribly real and present, and it catches everyone who cannot save his skin with a satisfactory answer. There is a blockage and the unconscious speaks to us, tells us how to get out of the situation. While the psychiatrists of his time and how many of the psychiatrists today?
A personality, a life history, a pattern of hopes and desires lie behind the psychosis. The fault is our if we do not understand them. While trying to understand his inner voices, his visions and his dreams, he arrives to theories that are of great help to modern therapists nowadays: While he eventually understands that he is not the generator of his thoughts, that they move through the human mind of their own accord, he understands also the purpose that his consciousness, human consciousness, the flicker in the dark has: He made me wonder what the Parable of Jov and the removed Book of Enoch from the Bible really meant and by reading interpretations on the Internet I stumbled upon some really interesting ideas about Summerians , what alchemy and gnosticism, religion and myths really were about.
I ended reading this book with the clear idea: God, this man was a genius and it cannot be random that he arrived to such groundbreaking conclusions by analyzing his own mind and most of the theories that humankind developed through centuries. As the Buddhists say, it is all in the mind and we are just not able to grasp this yet. He had the courage not to let his reason limit his struggles to make sense of the world. Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us accept only the known — and that too with limitations — and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how far life actually extends.
View all 10 comments. Nov 21, Martha Love rated it it was amazing. If you only read one book that is written by Carl Jung, this is the book to read. It is the most understandable book he has written and one I enjoy reading over and over! Jung wrote this book as more of a case study than as an autobiography, giving you a first hand understanding of his inner process. We do not usually get this kind of information from our great ones in psychology, rather we only get to read of their theories once formed and perhaps studies with their clients.
But we rarely are p If you only read one book that is written by Carl Jung, this is the book to read. But we rarely are privileged to the inner story like Jung reveals in this book, with the history and questions about self, along with his process of introspection and self-discovery that propelled his curiosity of the human condition and lead him to formulate his psychological theories about the individuation process.
Mar 31, James Curcio rated it really liked it Shelves: If you read anything by Jung, read this book. This deals with his psychological theories in a much more personal way than his other work, and, as it is written in the twilight of his life, he has no fear of academic or personal reprisal. His analysis of Freud is particularly revealing- both damning and humanizing. Of course, if you want to get the most out of this book, it may help If you read anything by Jung, read this book.
Of course, if you want to get the most out of this book, it may help to have a book such as the Complete Works of Jung handy, so you can familiarize yourself with his terminology and the progress of his ideas. On the other hand, if you get pissed off when "scholars" begin sentences with "I think You'll just hurt yourself.
He's completely fine with subjectivity. Read for the Immanence of Myth project www. Jung's autobiography was not really written by Jung. As the cover says, it was "recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe" between and his death in She therefore deserves much credit for producing a readable narrative which is quite entertaining, though not to be completely trusted. Ironically, although the copy of the first e Jung's autobiography was not really written by Jung. Ironically, although the copy of the first edition I read had no index, a subsequent copy purchased did, so the work did not have its intended benefit.
Jan 27, Sherah rated it liked it Shelves: I really, really, really, really, really enjoyed the first part of this book. I developed a strong crush on Dr. Jung due to his extreme sensitivity, reflection, and openmindedness displayed naturally from a very young age. We often fall for those who've been through the same fundamental inner experiences; I related so hard to his battle with religious doubt as a pre-teen and teenager.
I highlighted so much of the section of this book in which he explains his thoughts about God, as I'd had the sa I really, really, really, really, really enjoyed the first part of this book. I highlighted so much of the section of this book in which he explains his thoughts about God, as I'd had the same thoughts growing up in a religious home. Additionally, I was an "outsider" type as a child, an experience he documents as part of his own childhood pain. The integrity with which he approaches his personal belief system as a child impressed me, and he took that quality with him through the rest of his life, pursuing all of his interests with such analysis and then adding intuition on top of it, to enhance this already-solid eye.
I was into this book up through the parts where he described some patients, establishing himself as a psychiatrist, having fallouts with Freud. Once he started going into his visions not just dreams--visions! I haven't read any of his other works yet, so I don't know how "ready" I am to "get" the symbolism he seems to see in his subconscious expressions. It was at least interesting for a while, but then I started finding the analyses to be tedious, far-fetched, and even anxiety-provoking. Perhaps my own subconscious is being repressed and is fighting back against being seen!?!?!
I sure don't, and I'm too much of a psych-n00b to really get why. I started keeping a dream log as a result of this reading. I had originally decided to read this book because I wanted to have more insight into my dreams, but I didn't realize what I was in for.
Maybe after reading more accessible works I'll be able to return to Jung's self-analytics and appreciate them more. For now, ignorance colors it hokey and far-fetched. At least I'm keeping tabs on my dreams for future reference. Some quotes of note: View all 13 comments.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung
Oct 19, Farhan Khalid rated it it was amazing Shelves: What does God want? To act or not to act? On the contrary, it is nature I was a misunderstood artist Red book: I added an upper story to this section, an extension of consciousness achieved in old age The tower in some way was a place of maturation—a maternal womb A concretization of the individuation process I built the house in a kind of dream My personality no. The Creator may become conscious of His creation, and man conscious of himself If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures No science will ever replace myth It is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man The Word of God comes to us and we have no way of distinguishing whether it is different from God If the unconscious is anything at all, it must consist of earlier evolutionary stages of our conscious psyche We cannot see beyond the psyche We are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic "love" The difference between most people and myself is that for me the "dividing walls" are transparent Other find these walls so opaque that they see nothing behind them Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but being unable to communicate the things that seems important to oneself A creative person has little over his own life.
He is not free. He is captive and driven by daimon Dec 02, John Kulm rated it really liked it. I could probably learn something new each time I read this book, although, I might need a few years before I pick it up again. The book became tedious for me toward the end. I think his protege and successor Marie-Louise von Franz distills and presents Jung's ideas with more clarity. This is a different sort of autobiography because its focus is more internal than external.
In the prologue to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung wrote, "In the end the only events in my l I could probably learn something new each time I read this book, although, I might need a few years before I pick it up again. In the prologue to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung wrote, "In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world interrupted into this transitory one. That is why I speak chiefly on inner experiences, amongst which I include dreams and visions. Jung did go into his relationship with Freud in a very honest and revealing chapter, which I felt was a particularly interesting section.
The rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason these mutual impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeutic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Unless both doctor and patient become a problem to each other, no solution is found. Jul 19, Blumenfeld rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: What a fantastic, refreshing read!
Jung makes a great point addressing the loss of myths in the modern society, giving insights on neuroses and psychosis, and above everything——the importance of exploring unconscious. Of course, he goes further telling what has led him to this colossal journey, meeting and parting his ways with Freud, etc. I'd recommend this book to anyone. One could find out not only a tone about Jung and his life but What a fantastic, refreshing read!
One could find out not only a tone about Jung and his life but also about yourself. I can't say it about many books, thus Memories, Dreams, Reflections is something very special, something to dwell on and taste its words. Aug 14, Andy McKenzie rated it liked it Shelves: There is much that is profound and that I found potentially useful, but there is also much that seems dangerously delusional. Positives 1 Jung is an expert on the unconscious and that knowledge is on full display. The chapter "Confrontation with the Unconscious" is great on this. In particular, the sections near p discuss how one should strive to differentiate oneself from one's unconscious contents by naming and personifying them, so as to better negotiate and vibe with them.
Most mental operations are unconscious -- this much is now accepted neuropsyc wisdom -- so techniques to tap into and shape our unconscious processes deserve to percolate through our memeplexes even further. This idea is fascinating and is something I have not seen explored as in-depth elsewhere.
Section II of the "Last Thoughts" chapter, which focuses on this and takes it to all of its logical conclusions, is insanely money. As someone who aspires to straddle this divide as well, it is interesting to see how his path evolved. I also enjoyed his description of how he decided on psychiatry as a specialty once he read about "diseases of the personality" and realized that pursuing it would allow him to synthesize his various interests.
Finally, I respected his decision to leave academia when he felt it was too stifling of his long-term creative autonomy. I don't want this paragraph to make it seem that I am comparing myself to him in any favorable way, since I have accomplished basically nothing, but this a major part of what I got out of the book, and an honest review demands that I acknowledge it. This starts in the first chapter when he interprets a childhood accident as indicating an unconscious suicidal urge I wrote "lol what" in the margin , and continues throughout.
The most salient example of this occurs in his first interaction with Freud, during which he heard a loud sound in a bookcase, interpreted it as a "catalytic exteriorization phenomenon", predicted that it would happen again, and then cheerfully reported that it did. I have two explanations for why he might have viewed these random, independent events as actually related to one another: Evidence for b is his example about how the Taos Pueblo Native Americans had so much more meaning in their lives because they believed that their rituals were literally responsible for keeping the sun up in the sky.
Yes, but he doesn't mention that many patients may have gotten worse many years later and not told him; he likely doesn't mention this because of the insidious effects of confirmation bias. Thus I was put-off by his constant harping about how things used to be better in earlier, pre-Enlightenment eras e. Quotes On people who claim that children are innocent and cannot have interesting thoughts: For me it did not have this character at all.
To "God's world" belonged everything superhuman--dazzling light, the darkness of the abyss, the cold impassivity of infinite space and time, and the uncanny grotesqueness of the irrational world of chance. Afterward he said to me, "You know, Jung, what you have found out about this patient is certainly interesting.
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But how in the world were you able to bear spending hours and days with this phenomenally ugly female? They want the husband to belong entirely to them because they themselves do not belong to him. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love. Encounters with people of so many different kinds and on so many different psychological levels have been for me incomparably more important than fragmentary conversations with celebrities. The finest and most significant conversations of my life were anonymous. Of course he had taught me that everybody is somewhat neurotic, and that we must practice tolerance.
But it is also the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has vanished from our rational age. It was most essential to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world. My family and my profession remained the base to which I could always return, assuring me that I was an actually existing, ordinary person. The unconscious contents could have driven me out of my wits.
By my family, and the knowledge: I have a medical diploma from a Swiss university, I must help my patients, I have a wife and five children, I live at Seestrasee in Kusnacht--these were actualities which made demands upon me and proved to me again and again that I really existed, that I was not a blank page whirling about in the winds of the spirit, like Nietzsche For me, such irreality was the quintessence of horror, for I aimed, after all, at this world and this life. No matter how deeply absorbed or how blown about I was, I always knew that everything I was experiencing was ultimately directed at this real life of mine.
I meant to meet its obligations and fulfill its meanings. Hic Rhodus, hic salta! It is time this obvious fact were grasped at last. If so, could it be explained by nutrition? How convenient, then, that this is precisely what Jung possessed - symbolism throughout history that Jung found interesting: Throughout history, what have boys tended to draw pictures of? I think we all belong in the water" 4 q: What are the columns in Winer's version of Jung's association test?
What was the purpose of Jung's yoga exercises? What was Carl Jung's "something to protect" when he was working on understanding his fantasies? Accd to Jung, there is no better means of intensifying the feeling of individuality than what? Such a secret reinforces him in the isolation of his individual aims. A great many individuals cannot bear this isolation The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time of divine beauty.
Which element we think outweighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning, is a matter of temperament. Feb 23, Guillermo Galvan rated it it was amazing. I see Jung as a Buddha or Christ figure. Along with Freud, his work formed the foundation of modern psychology. Yet, he has always been considered a radical, in his time and ours, for acknowledging the soul and its relation with the unconscious.
This book is unlike all his others because of his openness. It's more than just his autobiography; it is his great revelation before he died. The I see Jung as a Buddha or Christ figure. The origins of all his great psychological discoveries are laid bare. Jung tells his life story with humor and charisma. His psychological development from child to adult is one of the most fascinating accounts I ever read. The degree of insight into his life led me to unpleasantness.
His views on blacks made me shake my head at a person I greatly admire. For example, on his visit to Africa he had a paranoia of having sex with black women, or as he referred to as "going black.
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Maybe there's some truth to it after all. He was unable to get past skin color functioning as a psychological border. This otherness intensified according to pigmentation. My favorite sentence being, " These were the blackest Negroes I had ever seen. Still, I have to give Jung his credit and say he was extremely open about race for his time.
He is redeemed by statements such as, " Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon of psychic life.
- Hypothesis and Theory ARTICLE;
- The Rhythm of the Blues.
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- Memories, Dreams, Reflections Quotes by C.G. Jung;
I'd like to go into all these sections with their brilliant quotes, but paraphrasing would only lead to misinterpretation. He's greatly impacted my life and I'd like to inspire others to give him a chance. I'll end this review with a quote that captures the dire importance of the mind. The psychic aberration of man is the danger. Everything depends upon whether or not our psyche functions properly. If certain persons lose their heads nowadays, a hydrogen bomb will go off.
Mar 10, Barak rated it liked it. An interesting and somewhat different autobiography. As far as I can discern normally biographies and autobiographies can be divided into two kinds: Those that put emphasis on the factual; either describing historical events in the person's life accompanied by cautious interpretations by the author these will be the official biographies in many cases or facts describing and interpreting the body of work of the person discussed, as is the case for intellectual biographies of philosophers and o An interesting and somewhat different autobiography.
Those that put emphasis on the factual; either describing historical events in the person's life accompanied by cautious interpretations by the author these will be the official biographies in many cases or facts describing and interpreting the body of work of the person discussed, as is the case for intellectual biographies of philosophers and other thinkers.
The above will typically apply to biographies and much less so to autobiographies. Those that emphasise the emotional; these will typically describe the person's state of mind, feelings, goals etcetera. They may be less accurate factually, but in many cases more engaging than the factual type.
This is more prevalent in autobiographies. Jung's autobiography is a curious admixture of both. On the one hand Jung is sceptical and rightly so as to whether an autobiography could be impartial and not self-deceiving, which is why he resisted writing this book for a long time. Once persuaded he decided to write a spiritual or mental self biography. Since Jung investigated the Psyche all his life, and perceived his research to be a scientific one, and the Psyche to be "an object" on a par and as real as anything we can see and touch, one gets from this autobiography a description in which the line between factual, emotional and intellectual and even between subjective and objective becomes blurred.
As to the validity of Jung's conceptual and factual framework? I suspect my personal psych is not as spiritual as Jung's was, and my unconscious not so accessible to me as Jung's was to himself, so in this regard I am in no way in a position to give value judgements on Jung's work and ideas. Not yet at least. In such matters I have no choice but to always wear the agnostic hat rather than say the gnostic one. Jung is one of my all time favorite thinkers.
What I love so much about this book was his more human moments where he showed himself to struggle with the same mundane elements of life that the rest of do. I used to have a false impression that an extremely talented individual would be equally impressive in all the other aspects of their life besides their chosen specialty. The first human moment that Jung discusses is his frustration with learning Math as a child.
The way he viewed math he C. The way he viewed math he struggled with grasping the over-arching purpose behind it since it was so incredibly theoretical and disconnected from anything tangible that the rules or axioms might as well be completely arbitrary. This resonated with me since I too slogged my way through math and had similar questions in the back of my mind the entire time I was learning Algebraic Theorems.
The book goes on to elaborate on how he arrived at his profession and developed his now well-known ideas. The part that impressed me the most was how unlike other scientists Jung didn't get lost in Empiricism and Objectivity. He still believed in the importance and value of how one experiences.
I think there are pros and cons to Empiricism but to me its most dangerous is when it is so completely absorbed by Scientists that they sacrifice part of their own humanity for it and start discounting subjective experience despite that it is the primary way through which all of humanity gains an understanding of the world around them. Feb 08, Derek Davis rated it liked it. I can't give this book an overall rating because I so dislike Jung as he presents himself here or it may be the way the material was assembled by his editor. He strikes me as an arrogant blowhard much of the time, even considering he was in his mids when he allowed this personal material, for the first time, to be put in autobiographical form.
I've heard that Jung had quite a sen I can't give this book an overall rating because I so dislike Jung as he presents himself here or it may be the way the material was assembled by his editor. I've heard that Jung had quite a sense of humor, but there's barely a trace of it here. He seems to take himself intensely seriously to the point of pomposity, and seems to take a peculiar pride in being self-contractory, which in others might prove endearing but with him comes across is annoying and grouchy.
All that said, there were certainly points in the narrative when he brings up strikingly original outlooks on the workings of the mind and shows a broad concern for the human condition. The appendix actually paints the most human portrait of him, in the letters sent to his wife Emma during his trip to America in , which have a light, airy and caring tone.
I can't help thinking, though, that this is a last man I would want to be my analyst. Feb 16, Elinor rated it really liked it. This is Jung's autobiography, which overall, I really enjoyed. Some of it is a little out-there for me, such as his belief in alchemy and spirits and other such things; I've heard he may have been a tiny bit unhinged. His spiritual views are beautiful, however, and I found them very inspiring. I was also very impressed with his incredible drive- he felt that his life had a realy purpose that he was destined to fulfill, and he worked extremely hard to accomplish his goals.
In post traumatic stress disorder, they get re-experienced over and over. In fact, from sleep studies in which people were exposed to images, learning tasks or other experiences immediately before they dozed off and then examined when they awakened, many scientists believe that dreams can help us rehearse for challenges or threats we anticipate—emotionally, cognitively and even physiologically.
Although much of the evidence for this is anecdotal, McNamara says, someone practicing piano or playing video games in waking life may start to do the same while dreaming. People solving a puzzle or studying a foreign language, he adds, can have breakthroughs with dreams that go beyond the perceptions that simply taking a break from the problem can produce.
But Dreams Do Have Meaning. For example, in research with rats trained to run through mazes to get rewards, investigators were able to record neuron activity in sleeping rats and determined that the rats were running the same mazes in their dreams. In other experiments with humans, scientists monitored volunteers who slept inside an fMRI scanner while hooked up to EEG electrodes that measured brain wave activity.
When the EEG indicated they were dreaming, the participants were awakened and asked what images they had seen in their dreams. The investigators were later able to match certain patterns of brain activity to certain images for each person. Despite the primitive state of this dream decoding, the ability to actually glean content from a dream is getting closer.
Mining big data bases of reported dreams holds another kind of promise. Until now, researchers have been working on relatively small samples of dream accounts, usually fewer than per study. But new dream websites and smartphone apps like DreamBoard and Dreamscloud are encouraging thousands of people to report their dreams into larger repositories so researchers can finally answer their most urgent questions.
The data bases also provide an opportunity to investigate the intriguing but under-studied realm of sex dreams. But self-reporting via the apps and websites, despite its potential biases, may provide more information on these types of dreams. When My Baby Dreams: That would bring him closer to answering whether dreams are, in fact, prophetic — it might be possible, for example, that certain kinds of dreams precede getting the flu, or that other other dreams are more associated with happier events.
Such investigations could also reveal more about less welcome dreams, such as nightmares, and potentially lead to ways to control or avoid them. One of her first projects will involve the dream data from DreamBoard. Because Dreamboard has coded the dreams by the gender, colors, emotions joy, anxiety, anger and the number and categories of people in a dream, Barrett says she can identify basic patterns.
Interpreting what these differences mean, however, will require deeper studies. With this research, McNamara believes, scientists can find out if what shrinks have been saying for years is true — that reflecting on our dreams is useful and can give us insight into ourselves.