45 pages • 1 hour read
C. G. Jung, Ed. Aniela Jaffé, Transl. Richard Winston, Transl. Clara WinstonMemories, Dreams, Reflections
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 11-RetrospectChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “On Life After Death”
Although Jung has never explicitly addressed the question of life after death before, he attempts to offer his insight into the subject in this chapter. He maintains that he cannot offer a clear answer as to whether the psychic self continues after death, but he believes that images offer a window into the afterlife: “Even now I can do no more than tell stories—’mythologize’” (299). The critical rationalism that became popular during the Enlightenment separates people from their personal mythologies. Jung is critical of the idea that everything is inherently knowable. Because psychology has revealed the vast nature of the unconscious, Jung is hesitant to assert that he knows definitive truth about the afterlife. However, he believes that the unconscious and hidden part of the psyche is the key to making meaning.
Jung recalls a few memories of death, including the loss of a friend’s son in a drowning accident. After this death and others, individuals experienced seeing the ghosts of the deceased, leading Jung to believe that there is still much to learn about the hidden experience of death. Some critics suggest that belief in afterlife is a fantasy to help cope with the reality of a limited existence. Jung argues that the recursive nature of the archetypes of collective consciousness hints at an unknowable experience beyond mortality.
In this chapter, Jung also introduces his concepts of extraversion and introversion. He asserts that people in Western cultures are inherently extroverted, while non-Western cultures are introverted. These differences in philosophy mirror differences in approaches to the afterlife. Because Western culture seeks meaning outside the self (extraversion), the need for a religious afterlife is prevalent. Non-Western cultures that emphasize meaning inside the self (introversion) have no need for this type of afterlife.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Late Thoughts”
Jung provides a list of additional thoughts that contribute to his ideas about consciousness, collective experience, and archetypes. First, he examines Christianity as an expression of personal mythology. Symbols, such as light and shadow, in Christianity mirror the archetypes of collective consciousness. He says that individuals who wish to live moral lives and who want to distinguish between good and evil should look to self-knowledge. Self-actualization requires an understanding of how the individual impacts the whole: “He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must be aware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion” (330).
Jung states that most people do not actively engage with self-knowledge and self-reflection. He argues that psychology and self-reflection are essential if humanity is to survive modern problems. Fascism exhibited by Nazism and Bolshevism reveals a fundamental lack of self-reflection. Therefore, a failure to self-reflect is the source of evil. The failure of Christianity to address this evil is a failure of mythology. Jung turns again to psychic wholeness and advocates for the same in religious context. The mandala symbol represents this wholeness. Psychological analysis brings psychic wholeness by integrating the shadow (unconscious) and conscious selves.
Retrospect Summary
Jung reflects on how his thinking differs from the thinking of those around him. He argues that he is not wise. Instead, he cannot help but see the world as fluid—the dividing walls between ideas and consciousnesses are transparent. He compares this way of seeing to a conversation between a student and his rabbi: “‘In the olden days there were men who saw the face of God. Why don’t they anymore?’ The rabbi replied, ‘Because nowadays no one can stoop so low’” (355). Jung compares his ability to look where others do not for answers to his early curiosity. As a child, he was often alone and focused on deep questions. He asserts that focusing inwardly on hidden meaning gives life a sense of significance. Jung continues to be invigorated by the unknowable and infinite aspects of life.
Because Jung approached life from a unique perspective, he found it difficult to connect with people. He admits that he abandoned people who lost a connection to his inner world. He became intensely interested in the experiences of his friends, but once he felt as though he understood the motivations for their behaviors, he lost his curiosity.
As he finishes his reflection, Jung compares himself to the archetype of the old man. He feels as though life has been full of both cruelty and beauty. As he grows older, Jung feels that life becomes increasingly complex and clouded. At the same time, his sense that he is in unity with all living things increases.
Chapter 11-Retrospect Analysis
Jung’s own end-of-life stage provides important contextual consideration for the ideas presented in the final chapters of the text. In her Introduction, Jaffé reflects on Jung’s increasingly observational tone as the text progresses, noting that “with each succeeding chapter he moved, as it were, farther away from himself, until at least he was able to see himself as well as the significance of his life and work from a distance” (xii). In this final section, Jung attempts to construct a theory about why his mind works the way it does and what has led him to view consciousness in such an interconnected, interdisciplinary manner.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections offers a chronological example of Jung’s own Individuation as a Process of Personal Evolution, which requires the detailed coding and analysis of personal mythology. His descriptions become more clinical and his critiques more expansive as he moves through his life from his childhood to his last years. Jung asserts that childhood memories and dreams are the most difficult to interpret because they lie closest to the heart of the unconscious. For Jung, true individuation involves bringing the unconscious forward and combining it with consciousness. Jung emphasizes this process as one in which The Architecture of the Self embraces the individual aspects of the psyche as well as their contribution to psychic wholeness:
Day after day we live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness; without our knowledge, the life of the unconscious is also going on within us. The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes: but the more of the unconscious, and the more of myth we are capable of making conscious, the more of life we integrate (302).
As he comes to the end of his life, Jung’s attention naturally turns toward the afterlife and the choices he made in the past. He seeks to incorporate as much as he can from his own unconscious into his holistic experience of the self. This retrospective posture allows Jung to consider how his lifelong internal focus impacts his external relationships. He admits that his need to psychoanalyze others and his desire to connect everything to his internal work of individuation often lead him to abandon his relationships. Although he does not offer a definitive viewpoint about the existence of an afterlife, he argues that the vast nature of the unconscious is proof that humans’ understanding of the spiritual world is extremely limited. His work with archetypes and individuation has led him to an alternative spiritual conclusion: Goodness is born out of critical reflection.
Jung connects his assertion that morality is rooted in self-knowledge to his childhood experience of faith. In Chapter 1, Jung describes his realization as a young boy that God wants humans to exert their wills so that they can be forgiven. While reflecting on his father’s unhappiness, Jung determines that his father did not experience the type of faith that he did—one built upon the foundation of the inevitability of sin. In Chapter 11, Jung offers a more mature understanding of the same idea, underscoring his belief in the constant and ongoing nature of personal growth. Jung proposes that true morality requires self-awareness, including the knowledge that one will inevitably commit acts that will harm others. Jung suggests that it is better to face the reality of one’s own flawed nature than to believe the lie that one can be entirely reformed from sin.
To build on this argument, the psychoanalyst posits a lack of self-reflection as the primary source of evil—an idea that Jung frames through a historical lens. He mentions Bolshevism and Nazism in his critique of Christianity’s treatment of good and evil and views fascist ideologies as the extension of limited thinking. While individuation requires the merging of the conscious and unconscious selves, evil through a lack of self-reflection seeks to keep the shadow hidden.
Jung’s ideas function as a reaction to the Enlightenment—a period that valorized rationalism and empirical thought. By focusing on mythologies and archetypes, Jung presents a way of thinking about psychological analysis that encompasses interdisciplinary approaches and the incorporation of spiritual experience into treatment. He argues that a holistic view of the psyche is more representative of the nature of human experience.
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