Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung introduces how the work will show the integration of his own biography with his philosophies. The psychologist explains that his life has been an ongoing process of self-actualization through merging the conscious and unconscious self and engaging with and unpacking personal mythology. He encourages the reader to set aside concerns with “truth” when examining the symbolism of personal mythology; the point of this process is to determine personal rather than objective truth: “The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth” (3).

Jung reflects on what it means to try and understand one’s own consciousness. He argues that an individual’s unconscious and conscious experiences are constantly evolving beyond their control. The experience of the psyche is infinite, and it is impossible to view the beginning or end with clarity. Therefore, it is impossible to make a final determination about the nature of one’s life or character.

Jung compares the unconscious experience of life to plants that grow using rhizomes. The part that emerges above the ground is fleeting, lasting only for the growing season. The rhizomes beneath the ground are infinite. The memories and ideas that matter the most from Jung’s past are those that lie deep within the surface. Rather than focusing on outward memories, Jung intends to highlight his inner experiences.

The first chapter offers a series of Jung’s early childhood memories. His memories begin when he was two or three years old. They are primarily happy—the warm sun shining on him and the smell of milk and bread. In several of his recollections, Jung connects the images of his youth to his adult feelings and philosophies. As he describes an image of a castle near Lake Constance, he recognizes it as the origin of his feeling that he must always live near water.

Jung also begins to recall negative images: the discovery of a dead body in the water, his childhood illness in 1878, and the separation from his parents when his mother was hospitalized for mental illness. Jung cites the latter experience as the origin of his mistrust in women, saying, “The feeling I associated with ‘woman’ was for a long time that of innate unreliability. ‘Father,’ on the other hand, meant reliability and—powerlessness” (8). He developed his first romantic interest in his family’s servant and imagined that she belonged only to him, citing her as the symbolic representation of his anima.

He then turns to his inner memories, which he describes as vague but more powerful. From an early age, Jung was drawn to depictions of art and aesthetically pleasing spaces. He recalls a beautiful dress of his mother’s. The illusive images of his unconscious experience reveal the origin of his mistrust in religion and God. As a child, he misunderstood an analogy of Jesus gathering little children like chicks as an indication that Jesus was a cannibal.

Jung’s parents began sleeping apart, and his mother acted strangely at night. Jung began to see visions, such as a figure with a detached head. At school, he found it difficult to connect with his classmates. When he spent time with them, he felt inauthentic. His daily interactions at school and with his parents forced him to develop a social persona. Switching into this persona caused him to feel internally conflicted. At the same age that he developed a social mask, he began playing with fire.

Jung recalls one of his childhood games in which he sat on a rock and began a thought experiment, questioning whether he was sitting on the stone or if he was the stone on which a boy was sitting. While meditating on the question, Jung often began to lose his sense of identity, unsure whether he was a boy or a rock. He tried the thought experiment again as an adult and found himself able to inhabit the same meditative state. This led the psychologist to the idea that childhood experiences are eternal.

The chapter closes with a memory that Jung revisits repeatedly throughout the work. While wrestling with the disunion of his persona and authentic self, he carved a figure onto the end of a wooden ruler. He hid the figure in the attic, and the knowledge that it was safely hidden there helped him feel more secure. Jung views this secret as one of the most important transformative experiences of his childhood. He compares his own rituals with the wooden figure to the religious rituals in some African cultures.

Jung outlines his experiences from age 11 to early adulthood. Returning to his analogy of rhizomes, he explains that the memories from these years are complicated and dim. Because they live beneath the surface of his mind, only parts are available to his recollection. His parents sent him to a secondary school in Basel, where he became aware for the first time in his life that his family was poor. Jung’s father was a country parson who discouraged his son from pursuing a similar career. The young boy’s relationship with his mother also grew more complex. Viewing her son as more of an intellectual equal than her own husband, Jung’s mother confided in him as a friend, often oversharing. Jung found her moods unpredictable. She occasionally made critical remarks about him that caused him to feel insecure.

Jung did not like school. His teachers had little confidence in his intellectual ability, and he found many of the subjects burdensome and contradictory. One time, a boy at school shoved him, causing him to fall and hit his head. The incident impacted Jung’s health, and he left school for several months, with his parents worried that he could have epilepsy. Jung enjoyed the time at home, walking in nature and spending time in his father’s library. When he heard his parents talking about how his condition might inhibit him from ever having a career, Jung determined that he would no longer faint. He began to study Latin grammar in his father’s study; each time he fainted, he asserted that he would never faint again. Jung claims that the technique worked and that he never fainted again.

He returned to school and soon became aware of how his life was split into two selves. Self No. 1 was the social self—the persona that helped him navigate life among his schoolmates. Self No. 2 was the authentic internal self that Jung soon learned to keep to himself. Each of these sides of his psyche had their own agendas and desires. While Jung considered future careers, he found that the two selves had conflicting ideas about what he should do. Reading philosophy helped Jung find an outlet for some of the thoughts that he kept to himself, but he struggled to choose a career that could satisfy both parts of his psyche.

During this period of his life, Jung also experienced a spiritual transformation. One day, while looking at a cathedral, he began to reflect on unforgivable sin. While considering it, the young boy felt an overwhelming desire to commit this sin. He felt consumed by the temptation, but he believed that he could not share his concern with the adults in his life. For three nights, he struggled to sleep, wrestling with his desire to commit a sin against the Holy Spirit. He worked through the theological problem and decided that God must want him to commit the sin so that he can experience God’s grace. Jung writes, “God in His omniscience had arranged everything so that the first parents would have to sin. Therefore it was God’s intention that they should sin” (38).

Jung mustered his courage and committed the sinful act: He imagined God sitting on a throne in heaven while defecating on the roof of a cathedral. This experience defined Jung’s early spiritualism. He saw the purpose of life as the constant pursuit of God’s will, and he believed that he had uncovered a secret that would unlock true understanding of God’s nature. Jung’s view was also connected to his suspicion that God had a darker side; he believed that God was responsible for everything in the world—both good and bad.