His genius lies in his blend of deep intuitive thinking and strict scientific empiricism. Jung's contributions are still slowly trickling down into the collective understanding of modern culture. One of Jung's greatest achievements has been his ability to produce a new vocabulary for modern man to deal with the processes that occur where the personal psyche meets objective reality.

"Memories, Dreams, Reflections" is the most insightful autobiography of Carl G. Jung's life and his humble experiences. I have read his other works, including Man and His Symbols and Dreams, and never fully understand them until I read this last book of his to which brings it all together in terms of his scientific approach. This 400-page book is a window into his inner world, and it is such a remarkable read.

In this book, Jung revealed much wisdom and insights from his early years up to his remainder of his life. One even can learn about oneself from his life. It is very much worth reading. It is both fascinating and inspiring.

My favorite line of Jung from this book:

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

Wow!

I've always admired Carl Gustav Jung, and this book, a biography of his inner life, has helped me to understand him much better. It was fascinating to read about his boyhood, his adolescence, his days as a student, his time as a doctor (most all of his adult life) and his travels. And the best part was the insights he shared about his inner life.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in reading this book was the extent to which I identified with him. As a child I had a rich imagination and sometimes thought that I was some kind of an odd-wad. And like Jung, not only did I have trouble with algebra when I was in junior high, I also, like Jung, had thought it was a plot! It was nice to find out that a highly intelligent person like Jung had experienced many just-like-it-only-different events as I had.

The biggest thing I appreciate about Carl Jung is his attitude towards the individual. I think he has one of the best treatments of individualism that I've read. The "individuating" process he outlines will make us better members of the community. Like Jung, I have always felt that the community is only as healthy as the individuals in it.

I continue to learn about his approach to dreams and to learn new insights from this book. It's very much worth reading.

As much as I would have liked to learn about Jung's life I just couldn' finish this book. Jung comes across as so incredibly self-absorbed - it's only me, I, me, I and me again. He writes hundreds of pages about his most detailed inner experiences, yet there is not a single word about his relationship to his wife, children and mistresses. If I hadn't known that he was married with five children I would have assumed he was a complete hermit. Loving relationships seem to have meant nothing to this man. I honestly wonder how he could have been a good therapist. I also wonder why so many women have followed his teachings when quite obviously he held them in such low regard. I only hope that the reality was better than this book makes him out to be.

This book is sublime, a GEM. In his subjective view of the world -"with half closed eyes and somewhat closed ears, to see and hear the form and voice of being" he arrived at an inspiring insight about life: supreme meaning of being can consist only in the fact that is,not that it is not or is no longer; nature, the mystery of love, the psyche, life, human beings, a state of lively contemplation of images is divinity unfolded (the greatest of miracles)-being conscious of this can come to you not through emptiness, imagelessneess or wanting to be freed from nature or yourself.
Here's a passage of the book that reflects the quintessence of his wisdom:
No language is adequate for this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words reflect the whole; for only the whole is meaningful...love "bears all things" and "endures all things". These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic "love"- a unified and undivided whole. Being a part man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it; but he is always caught by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. "Love ceases not"-whether he speaks with the "tongue of angels", or with scientific exactitude traces the life cell down to its uttermost source. Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown- ignotum per ignotius-that is, by God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error.
If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.

Jung's work is often difficult to read. This is an excellent introduction to his thinking, and a fine outline of his life. Man and his Symbols is also a good intro to Jungian thought.

However, over long, somewhat pompous comments are really not appropriate. Jungians would call this inflation.

This is a book that I read with intense interest, I walked around the house , this book in hand.

C.G. Jung is caught here , his childhood, his quirks. He remains a very fascinating man. This is the only book about C.G. Jung I've read.

I particularly liked the chapter 'Late Thoughts", though the book in whole is very curiosity inspiring.

Loved it.

According to Jung, the unconscious tries to "compensate" the "lopsidedness" in the conscious attitude, and dreams are part of this process. He says: "The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is the best proven rule of dream interpretation" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). The examination of Jung's dream interpretations reveals that what he calls "lopsidedness" is a harmful mistake, or a harmful mental/behavioral failure, and "compensation" means the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the mental/behavioral failure.

As I explained elsewhere, the compensation of the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude by the unconscious is only a particular manifestation of the general truth that all functions of the mind, or all of its "topographical parts" in Freud's words, complement each other and constitute an integrated system, in contradiction with Freud's theory of conflict. In fact, Jung's theory was produced as a reaction to Freud's conflict theory. Consequently, we can equally say that consciousness sometimes compensates the lopsidedness in the unconscious attitude. Besides, it is most natural to expect such cooperation to work even when it is not possible to talk about any lopsidedness in the conscious or unconscious attitude. I described this cooperation in much detail elsewhere in my chapter on cerebral lateralization.

Again as I explained elsewhere, Jung's conception of the function of dreams is basically correct and constitutes a very fruitful idea. But he did not apply this idea adequately to dream interpretation, apparently because he did not express it clearly and used instead obscure ideas like lopsidedness and compensation. His major mistake was to assume that every dream presented the compensated state of the lopsidedness, or the corrected state of the mistake.

Jung could be able to produce a correct theory of dreams if he tried to answer the following questions: (a) What is the content of lopsidedness in general but clear terms? (b) How does the conscious attitude become lopsided and why it cannot correct its lopsidedness itself? (c) What makes the unconscious fit to compensate the lopsidedness of the conscious attitude? (d) In what measure the unconscious succeeds or fails in doing the compensation work, and why? (e) Most importantly, how does the unconscious do the job of compensation, or the correction of the harmful mistake? It is evident that in the absence of especially the answer to the last question, it is not possible to discover all the thoughts expressed by a dream.

As I explained elsewhere, a complete dream contains three types of thought: (a) the presentation of the lopsidedeness, or the mistake, which is treated by the dream; (b) the explanation of the cause of the mistake, or failure, which is often in the form of the external attribution of the failure; and (c) the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the failure. A complete dream begins either with thought (a) or (b) and ends with thought (c). Thoughts (b) and/or (c) may be missing in a dream or may be implicit in another part of the dream, but thought (a) is always present in explicit or implicit form because it is the reason why the dream is produced. In reality, this understanding of dreams is implied by Jung's compensation idea, because the fact that the unconscious can compensate the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude means that the unconscious is rational enough to do that, and the above three types of thought are the ones produced consciously and rationally when dealing with failures in the waking state.

Jung was not able to see these facts, because he could not free himself sufficiently from Freud's influence. Just as Freud interpreted everything in a dream as meaning wish fulfillment, Jung interpreted every dream as presenting the compensated state of the lopsided that it treated. In reality, a dream may present the lopsidedness instead of its compensated state, as exemplified below.

Jung's dream about his patient (p. 133): In his dream, Jung looks up at his female patient who is "sitting on a kind of balustrade," "on the highest tower" of a castle "at the top of a steep hill;" he bends his head back too far to see her properly and wakes up with a crick in the back of his neck.

Jung's interpretation based on the compensation hypothesis was this: "If in the dream I had to look up at the patient in this fashion, in reality I had probably been looking down on her." So, he assumed that the dream was telling him not to look down on her. This interpretation was based on the assumption that the dream scene represented what Jung had to do in real life, which means the solution of his problem, or the compensation of the lopsidedness in his conscious attitude. This interpretation contradicts the fact that Jung hurt himself in the dream by looking up at his patient and also by the fact that he considered his patient in real life "a highly intelligent woman." These contradictions can be eliminated by assuming that the dream scene represented the mistake that Jung was making in real life, or his problem, not its solution as he assumed. So, the correct message of the dream appears to be this: "You are making a mistake and hurting your interests by overestimating your patient." The implied advise was to stop overestimating her, which is the exact opposite of what Jung thought the dream was advising him. This interpretation is supported not only by the pain that Jung felt in the back of his neck at the end of the dream and his waking state evaluation of his patient as a highly intelligent woman but also by the fact that he was unable to realize progress in the therapy of his patient, evidently because he considered her a highly intelligent woman. This dream shows that the compensation hypothesis can cause a wrong interpretation even when the subject matter of a dream is approximately recognized, which is not always the case, and that therefore this hypothesis may also say nothing about the meaning of a dream. In such cases, Jung introduced obscure ideas in the interpretations, such as mandala, archetype, and collective unconscious, without explaining why these appear in the dream and what they precisely mean in relation to the dreamer's life. In fact, many of Jung's ideas are found "mystical." In opposition to this, Freud's interpretations are always clear and detailed but always wrong basically. But despite this fact, Freud's dream theory is more popular than Jung's, because it is found plausible due to the fact that it is produced by likening dreams to daydreams which mean wish fulfillment as everyone knows.

Jung's understanding of dreams needs to be corrected, or completed, also concerning the language of dreams. He criticized Freud's idea of dream symbolism saying that what Freud meant when he said "symbol" was "sign," and that a symbol was something more complex than a sign. Today the widely accepted view is that dream language is concrete-analogic, or concrete-metaphoric. In reality, most of Freud's dream symbols involved analogies, but many other writers abused the concept of dream symbolism and produced largely invalid dictionaries of dream symbols. Not only dream language but also dream cognition is concrete-analogic and therefore cannot use abstractions and logic. This is a consequence of the accepted view that dream thoughts are produced by the right brain which operates using concrete analogies instead of abstractions, speech, and logic. The verbal metaphors that are used in the waking state are also used in dreams in concrete pictorial form, because the source of both the waking state analogies, or metaphors, and dream analogies appear to be the right brain. Because of this, dictionaries of dream symbols can contain correct entries, but even the most common analogies can carry special meanings when used in dreams in relation to the dreamer's life experiences. Many otherwise correct dream interpretations by Jung and his followers are somewhat flawed because of they twisted the meanings of dream analogies in various ways. An example is below.

A man dreamed that as he came out of a meeting he put on somebody else's hat. Jung could say nothing about the relation of this dream to the dreamer's life experiences and claimed only that the hat represented the Mandela, which, according to him, is a concept present in every human mind. The analogic interpretation of this dream can be that the dreamer had easily accepted, or was in the habit of easily accepting, other people's ideas and views. This would be the presentation of a lopsidedness in his conscious attitude.

Jung was aware of the insufficiency of his theory and said: "There are still boundless opportunities for pioneer work in this field" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). Nevertheless, he and his followers produced many correct and nearly correct dream interpretations. Jung's readers can use his compensation theory better then he did by keeping in view the facts mentioned above and reading my book. Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy

Jung's compensation theory can be seen as the solution of the problem of dream interpretation, and thereby of the problem of dream function, if the process by which compensation is realized and the analogic cognition and language of dreams are taken into consideration, both as explained above.

According to Jung, the unconscious tries to "compensate" the "lopsidedness" in the conscious attitude, and dreams are part of this process. He says: "The relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is the best proven rule of dream interpretation" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). The examination of Jung's dream interpretations reveals that what he calls "lopsidedness" is a harmful mistake, or a harmful mental/behavioral failure, and "compensation" means the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the mental/behavioral failure.

As I explained elsewhere, the compensation of the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude by the unconscious is only a particular manifestation of the general truth that all functions of the mind, or all of its "topographical parts" in Freud's words, complement each other and constitute an integrated system, in contradiction with Freud's theory of conflict. In fact, Jung's theory was produced as a reaction to Freud's conflict theory. Consequently, we can equally say that consciousness sometimes compensates the lopsidedness in the unconscious attitude. Besides, it is most natural to expect such cooperation to work even when it is not possible to talk about any lopsidedness in the conscious or unconscious attitude. I described this cooperation in much detail elsewhere in my chapter on cerebral lateralization.

Again as I explained elsewhere, Jung's conception of the function of dreams is basically correct and constitutes a very fruitful idea. But he did not apply this idea adequately to dream interpretation, apparently because he did not express it clearly and used instead obscure ideas like lopsidedness and compensation. His major mistake was to assume that every dream presented the compensated state of the lopsidedness, or the corrected state of the mistake.

Jung could be able to produce a correct theory of dreams if he tried to answer the following questions: (a) What is the content of lopsidedness in general but clear terms? (b) How does the conscious attitude become lopsided and why it cannot correct its lopsidedness itself? (c) What makes the unconscious fit to compensate the lopsidedness of the conscious attitude? (d) In what measure the unconscious succeeds or fails in doing the compensation work, and why? (e) Most importantly, how does the unconscious do the job of compensation, or the correction of the harmful mistake? It is evident that in the absence of especially the answer to the last question, it is not possible to discover all the thoughts expressed by a dream.

As I explained elsewhere, a complete dream contains three types of thought: (a) the presentation of the lopsidedeness, or the mistake, which is treated by the dream; (b) the explanation of the cause of the mistake, or failure, which is often in the form of the external attribution of the failure; and (c) the correction of the mistake, or the termination of the failure. A complete dream begins either with thought (a) or (b) and ends with thought (c). Thoughts (b) and/or (c) may be missing in a dream or may be implicit in another part of the dream, but thought (a) is always present in explicit or implicit form because it is the reason why the dream is produced. In reality, this understanding of dreams is implied by Jung's compensation idea, because the fact that the unconscious can compensate the lopsidedness in the conscious attitude means that the unconscious is rational enough to do that, and the above three types of thought are the ones produced consciously and rationally when dealing with failures in the waking state.

Jung was not able to see these facts, because he could not free himself sufficiently from Freud's influence. Just as Freud interpreted everything in a dream as meaning wish fulfillment, Jung interpreted every dream as presenting the compensated state of the lopsided that it treated. In reality, a dream may present the lopsidedness instead of its compensated state, as exemplified below.

Jung's dream about his patient (p. 133): In his dream, Jung looks up at his female patient who is "sitting on a kind of balustrade," "on the highest tower" of a castle "at the top of a steep hill;" he bends his head back too far to see her properly and wakes up with a crick in the back of his neck.

Jung's interpretation based on the compensation hypothesis was this: "If in the dream I had to look up at the patient in this fashion, in reality I had probably been looking down on her." So, he assumed that the dream was telling him not to look down on her. This interpretation was based on the assumption that the dream scene represented what Jung had to do in real life, which means the solution of his problem, or the compensation of the lopsidedness in his conscious attitude. This interpretation contradicts the fact that Jung hurt himself in the dream by looking up at his patient and also by the fact that he considered his patient in real life "a highly intelligent woman." These contradictions can be eliminated by assuming that the dream scene represented the mistake that Jung was making in real life, or his problem, not its solution as he assumed. So, the correct message of the dream appears to be this: "You are making a mistake and hurting your interests by overestimating your patient." The implied advise was to stop overestimating her, which is the exact opposite of what Jung thought the dream was advising him. This interpretation is supported not only by the pain that Jung felt in the back of his neck at the end of the dream and his waking state evaluation of his patient as a highly intelligent woman but also by the fact that he was unable to realize progress in the therapy of his patient, evidently because he considered her a highly intelligent woman. This dream shows that the compensation hypothesis can cause a wrong interpretation even when the subject matter of a dream is approximately recognized, which is not always the case, and that therefore this hypothesis may also say nothing about the meaning of a dream. In such cases, Jung introduced obscure ideas in the interpretations, such as mandala, archetype, and collective unconscious, without explaining why these appear in the dream and what they precisely mean in relation to the dreamer's life. In fact, many of Jung's ideas are found "mystical." In opposition to this, Freud's interpretations are always clear and detailed but always wrong basically. But despite this fact, Freud's dream theory is more popular than Jung's, because it is found plausible due to the fact that it is produced by likening dreams to daydreams which mean wish fulfillment as everyone knows.

Jung was aware of the insufficiency of his theory and said: "There are still boundless opportunities for pioneer work in this field" (Collected Works, Vol. 16). Nevertheless, he and his followers produced many correct and nearly correct dream interpretations. Jung's readers can use his compensation theory better then he did by keeping in view the facts mentioned above and reading my book.Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is an excellent introduction into Jung however the unbelievable value of this journey can only be fully appreciated or grasped when one understands that what the psyche can generate as unreality is not just the yellow brick road of confusion but has its own personal reality. There is order to it and the instructions are present at its primordial state even if this order is in the form of imagery, metaphors, similes or representations rather than writing or mathematical equations! Is it thus not incredible that previous attempts to understand this mystery had been trying to apply various formulas both supernatural and natural instead of just dealing with the substance as it is... consciousness.

Psychology is to evolution what quantum mechanics is to relativistic cosmology. The need for a person to explain themselves is a need as old as people themselves.

It is clear through history that there have been subsequent starts and stops in this pursuit but more importantly our understanding of it has matured as time has gone by. Jung had taken one of the most adult steps towards comprehending the unknown since Aquinas wrote "The Summa Theologica" in the thirteenth century. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysing religion. The benefits are immense for the person reading this book and understanding religion and themselves in a very private way.

It took C.G Jung decades to realize that consciousness is a developing process. It took him decades more to conclude that this developing progress is consciousness itself and to stop right here for the time being and call this the bases for all experiences that matter to us. Like Plato's forms, this core of our mind, the subconscious or historical `soul', is almost infinite in imagination but contains an inherited structure of primordial figures and symbols that is universal to all people. Borrowing from Aquinas he called these images `archetypes', finding them present in dreams and fantasies. Since he did not understand these symbols right away he sought out their meaning through research into Freud's work on the psychoanalysis of dream imagery and Jung's own interest in various cultural mysticisms especially religions.

Jung's quest to explain the archetypes was a success and led him to dramatically cure psychogenetic illnesses that were mistaken for something else entirely and usually thought to be incurable. Jung had found that many patients, some violently ill, were simply at odds with themselves over a traumatic experience. Jung could penetrate the trauma by simply letting the patient reveal the trauma through their own personal symbols which included elaborate fantasies. This was the dawn of psychotherapy that Freud never understood because he could not deal with his own distress. Jung on the other hand had the lucky experience of having already dealt with his own disturbances at a young age and so was already on a quest to appreciate the archetypes that Freud could never uncover in his persistent mind block after replacing God with sex as his own personal dogma. In one shocking sequence of events Jung describes how Freud fainted (which happened on several occasions when topics touching on Freud's personal issues were invoked) and as Jung carried Freud into the bedroom after one of the fainting spells Freud looked upon Jung as if he was his father in this exposed state his subconscious emerged for a few moments.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is the autobiography of Jung and his search for the meaning of consciousness and its manifestations including the experience of the process of itself. This is about Jung's truth, a personal truth.

Jung starts by describing his youth and the environment he was brought up in. Here he brings up memories such as dreams and imagery. He talks about the difficultly in his family over relationships and his problem with the powerlessness of men and how love was associated with something hateful. Jung experienced a phallus in a dream before he knew what a phallus was. In his Christian family he could never expose that he experienced such a thing. Vulnerable to being condemned a heathen by his parents he was afraid to discuss it and so had to psychoanalyse it for himself. His anxiety increased and his dreams become more vivid along with his growing fear of something unknown. Jung was experiencing adolescence and the secrets that come with it.

One of the secrets was so secret even Jung did not know about it. It was there in the back of his mind but he was afraid to let it appear. At one point Jung finally let go of that which has been traumatically disturbing him, something he could not possibly think about because the result would have been a life threatening disaster. It comes in the form of a giant piece of holy faeces laid by God the father sitting on his thrown which crashes down onto the local church and obliterates it. Jung feels grace, believing like Abraham that he has finally submitted his will fully to God who wanted him to have this experience.

Jung believed his father's own personal problems stemmed from not allowing his thoughts to fully emerge in himself because of indoctrination (doctrine or shrugging seemed to suffice). To Jung the will of the father was simply beyond any form of indoctrination. If the will of the father is to commit the ultimate sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) then so be it even against the fear of losing salvation (however the point here is that he let go, so that he could go on discoverying more about religion. The experience only lasted a moment and then he returned to the quest to understand God and his relationship with him). That is the faith of Abraham that one needs to go beyond the conscious self to meet the maker. He believes he did God's will and that is what is important.

Jung obviously made limited attempts to save his father from the problem of indoctrination preventing him from experiencing God. Jung would ask himself why his father did not argue out his problems with God and instead took it out on himself and his family. Shortly after he died, witnessed by Jung, his mother indicated that his father died at an appropriate time to allow Jung to continue on without the hindrance of a man who was locked up in dogma. This theme would crop up again when Jung meets Freud who also had his own "code of belief" that he could not break.

Jung's experience made him want to examine nature and eventually he pursued a career in medicine where he came across the obscure study of psychiatry.

Following this Jung covers his studies of psychiatry and goes through a number of case histories including the amazing psychoanalysis he did on Freud which comprises a whole third of the book and then the final sections where the psychoanalysis is ultimately applied to himself.

Jung draws the conclusion that open-minded analyses is essential as is allowing one to express themselves within the realm of safety of that which is the imagination to its fullest extent. He sums this by explanation that one's alienation from the world can be transferred to one's own inner world that has revealed to him a quite unexpected familiarity with himself.

Warning: This work can be very deep and should require professional assistance if one seeks to undergo the kind of self-psychotherapy that the book goes into. Not recommended to go it alone without professionals.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is an excellent introduction into Jung however the unbelievable value of this journey can only be fully appreciated or grasped when one understands that what the psyche can generate as unreality is not just the yellow brick road of confusion but has its own personal reality. There is order to it and the instructions are present at its primordial state even if this order is in the form of imagery, metaphors, similes or representations rather than writing or mathematical equations! Is it thus not incredible that previous attempts to understand this mystery had been trying to apply various formulas both supernatural and natural instead of just dealing with the substance as it is... consciousness.

Psychology is to evolution what quantum mechanics is to relativistic cosmology. The need for a person to explain themselves is a need as old as people themselves.

It is clear through history that there have been subsequent starts and stops in this pursuit but more importantly our understanding of it has matured as time has gone by. Jung had taken one of the most adult steps towards comprehending the unknown since Aquinas wrote "The Summa Theologica" in the thirteenth century. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysing religion. The benefits are immense for the person reading this book and understanding religion and themselves in a very private way.

It took C.G Jung decades to realize that consciousness is a developing process. It took him decades more to conclude that this developing progress is consciousness itself and to stop right here for the time being and call this the bases for all experiences that matter to us. Like Plato's forms, this core of our mind, the subconscious or historical `soul', is almost infinite in imagination but contains an inherited structure of primordial figures and symbols that is universal to all people. Borrowing from Aquinas he called these images `archetypes', finding them present in dreams and fantasies. Since he did not understand these symbols right away he sought out their meaning through research into Freud's work on the psychoanalysis of dream imagery and Jung's own interest in various cultural mysticisms especially religions.

Jung's quest to explain the archetypes was a success and led him to dramatically cure psychogenetic illnesses that were mistaken for something else entirely and usually thought to be incurable. Jung had found that many patients, some violently ill, were simply at odds with themselves over a traumatic experience. Jung could penetrate the trauma by simply letting the patient reveal the trauma through their own personal symbols which included elaborate fantasies. This was the dawn of psychotherapy that Freud never understood because he could not deal with his own distress. Jung on the other hand had the lucky experience of having already dealt with his own disturbances at a young age and so was already on a quest to appreciate the archetypes that Freud could never uncover in his persistent mind block after replacing God with sex as his own personal dogma. In one shocking sequence of events Jung describes how Freud fainted (which happened on several occasions when topics touching on Freud's personal issues were invoked) and as Freud carried him into the bedroom after one of the fainting spells Freud looked upon Jung as if he was his father in this exposed state his subconscious emerged for a few moments.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is the autobiography of Jung and his search for the meaning of consciousness and its manifestations including the experience of the process of itself. This is about Jung's truth, a personal truth.

Jung starts by describing his youth and the environment he was brought up in. Here he brings up memories such as dreams and imagery. He talks about the difficultly in his family over relationships and his problem with the powerlessness of men and how love was associated with something hateful. Jung experienced a phallus in a dream before he knew what a phallus was. In his Christian family he could never expose that he experienced such a thing. Vulnerable to being condemned a heathen by his parents he was afraid to discuss it and so had to psychoanalyse it for himself. His anxiety increased and his dreams become more vivid along with his growing fear of something unknown. Jung was experiencing adolescence and the secrets that come with it.

One of the secrets was so secret even Jung did not know about it. It was there in the back of his mind but he was afraid to let it appear. At one point Jung finally let go of that which has been traumatically disturbing him, something he could not possibly think about because the result would have been a life threatening disaster. It comes in the form of a giant piece of holy faeces laid by God the father sitting on his thrown which crashes down onto the local church and obliterates it. Jung feels grace, believing like Abraham that he has finally submitted his will fully to God who wanted him to have this experience.

Jung believed his father's own personal problems stemmed from not allowing his thoughts to fully emerge in himself because of indoctrination (doctrine or shrugging seemed to suffice). To Jung the will of the father was simply beyond any form of indoctrination. If the will of the father is to commit the ultimate sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) then so be it even against the fear of losing salvation (however the point here is that he let go, so that he could go discoverying religion. It only lasted a moment). That is the faith of Abraham that one needs to go beyond the conscious self to meet the maker. He believes he did God's will and that is what is important.

Jung obviously made limited attempts to save his father from the problem of indoctrination preventing him from experiencing God. Jung would ask himself why his father did not argue out his problems with God and instead took it out on himself and his family. Shortly after he died, witnessed by Jung, his mother indicated that his father died at an appropriate time to allow Jung to continue on without the hindrance of a man who was locked up in dogma. This theme would crop up again when Jung meets Freud who also had his own "code of belief" that he could not break.

Jung's experience made him want to examine nature and eventually he pursued a career in medicine where he came across the obscure study of psychiatry.

Following this Jung covers his studies of psychiatry and goes through a number of case histories including the amazing psychoanalysis he did on Freud which comprises a whole third of the book and then the final sections where the psychoanalysis is ultimately applied to himself.

Jung draws the conclusion that open-minded analyses is essential as is allowing one to express themselves within the realm of safety of that which is the imagination to its fullest extent. He sums this by explanation that one's alienation from the world can be transferred to one's own inner world that has revealed to him a quite unexpected familiarity with himself.

Warning: This work can be very deep and should require professional assistance if one seeks to undergo the kind of self-psychotherapy that the book goes into. Not recommended to go it alone without professionals.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is an excellent introduction into Jung however the unbelievable value of this journey can only be fully appreciated or grasped when one understands that what the psyche can generate as unreality is not just the yellow brick road of confusion but has its own personal reality. There is order to it and the instructions are present at its primordial state even if this order is in the form of imagery, metaphors, similes or representations rather than writing or mathematical equations! Is it thus not incredible that previous attempt to understand this mystery had been trying to apply various formulas both supernatural and natural instead of just dealing with the substance as it is... consciousness.

Psychology is to evolution what quantum mechanics is to relativistic cosmology. The need for a person to explain themselves is a need as old as people themselves.

It is clear through history that there have been subsequent starts and stops in this pursuit but more importantly our understanding of it has matured as time has gone by. Jung had taken one of the most adult steps towards comprehended the unknown since Aquinas wrote "The Summa Theologica" in the thirteenth century. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysing religion. The benefits are immense for the person reading this book and understanding religion and themselves in a very private way.

It took C.G Jung decades to realize that consciousness is a developing process. It took him decades more to conclude that this developing progress is consciousness itself and to stop right here for the time being and call this the bases for all experiences that matter to us. Like Plato's forms, this core of our mind, the subconscious or historical `soul', is almost infinite in imagination but contains an inherited structure of primordial figures and symbols that is universal to all people. Borrowing from Aquinas he called these images `archetypes', finding them present in dreams and fantasies. Since he did not understand these symbols right away he sought out their meaning through research into Freud's work on the psychoanalysis of dream imagery and Jung's own interest in various cultural mysticisms especially religions.

Jung's quest to explain the archetypes was a success and led him to dramatically cure psychogenetic illnesses that were mistaken for something else entirely and usually thought to be incurable. Jung had found that many patients, some violently ill, were simply at odds with themselves over a traumatic experience. Jung could penetrate the trauma by simply letting the patient reveal the trauma through their own personal symbols which included elaborate fantasies. This was the dawn of psychotherapy that Freud never understood because he could not deal with his own distress. Jung on the other hand had the lucky experience of having already dealt with his own disturbances at a young age and so was already on a quest to appreciate the archetypes that Freud could never uncover in his persistent mind block after replacing God with sex as his own personal dogma. In one shocking sequence of events Jung describes how Freud fainted (which happened on several occasions when topics touching on Freud's personal issues were invoked) and as Freud carried him into the bedroom after one of the fainting spells Freud looked upon Jung as if he was his father in this exposed state his subconscious emerged for a few moments.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is the autobiography of Jung and his search for the meaning of consciousness and its manifestations including the experience of the process of itself. This is about Jung's truth, a personal truth.

Jung starts by describing his youth and the environment he was brought up in. Here he brings up memories such as dreams and imagery. He talks about the difficultly in his family over relationships and his problem with the powerlessness of men and how love was associated with something hateful. Jung experienced a phallus in a dream before he knew what a phallus was. In his Christian family he could never expose that he experienced such a thing. Vulnerable to being condemned a heathen by his parents he was afraid to discuss it and so had to psychoanalyse it for himself. His anxiety increased and his dreams become more vivid along with his growing fear of something unknown. Jung was experiencing adolescence and the secrets that come with it.

One of the secrets was so secret even Jung did not know about. It was there in the back of his mind but he was afraid to let it appear. At one point Jung finally let go of that which has been traumatically disturbing him, something he could not possibly think about because the result would have been a life threatening disaster. It comes in the form of a giant piece of holy faeces laid by God the father sitting on his thrown which crashes down onto the local church and obliterates it. Jung feels grace, believing like Abraham that he has finally submitted his will fully to God who wanted him to have this experience.

Jung believed his father's own personal problems stemmed from not allowing his thoughts to fully emerge in himself because of indoctrination (doctrine or shrugging seemed to suffice). To Jung the will of the father was simply beyond any form of indoctrination. If the will of the father is to commit the ultimate sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) then so be it even against the fear of losing salvation. That is the faith of Abraham that one needs to go beyond the conscious self to meet the maker.

Jung obviously made limited attempts to save his father from the problem of indoctrination preventing him from experiencing God. Jung would ask himself why his father did not argue out his problems with God and instead took it out on himself and his family. Shortly after he died, witnessed by Jung, his mother indicated that his father died at an appropriate time to allow Jung to continue on without the hindrance of a man who was locked up in dogma. This theme would crop up again when Jung meets Freud who also had his own "code of belief" that he could not break.

Jung's experience made him want to examine nature and eventually he pursued a career in medicine where he came across the obscure study of psychiatry.

Following this Jung covers his studies of psychiatry and goes through a number of case histories including the amazing psychoanalysis he did on Freud which comprises a whole third of the book and then the final sections where the psychoanalysis is ultimately on applied to himself.

Jung draws the conclusion that open-minded analyses is essential as is allowing one to express themselves within the realm of safety of that which is the imagination to its fullest extent. He sums this by explanation that one's alienation from the world can be transferred to one's own inner world that has revealed to him a quite unexpected familiarity with himself.

Warning: This work can be very deep and should require professional assistance if one seeks to undergo the kind of self-psychotherapy that the book goes into. Not recommended to go it alone without professionals.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is an excellent introduction into Jung however the unbelievable value of this journey can only be fully appreciated or grasped when one understands that what the psyche can generate as unreality is not just the yellow brick road of confusion but has its own personal reality. There is order to it and the instructions are present at its primordial state even if this order is in the form of imagery, metaphors, similes or representations rather than writing or mathematical equations! Is it thus not incredible that previous attempt to understand this mystery had been trying to apply various formulas both supernatural and natural instead of just dealing with the substance as it is... consciousness.

Psychology is to evolution what quantum mechanics is to relativistic cosmology. The need for a person to explain themselves is a need as old as people themselves.

It is clear through history that there have been subsequent starts and stops in this pursuit but more importantly our understanding of it has matured as time has gone by. Jung had taken one of the most adult steps towards comprehended the unknown since Aquinas wrote "The Summa Theologica" in the thirteenth century. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysing religion. The benefits are immense for the person reading this book and understanding religion and themselves in a very private way.

It took C.G Jung decades to realize that consciousness is a developing process. It took him decades more to conclude that this developing progress is consciousness itself and to stop right here for the time being and call this the bases for all experiences that matter to us. Like Plato's forms, this core of our mind, the subconscious or historical `soul', is almost infinite in imagination but contains an inherited structure of primordial figures and symbols that is universal to all people. Borrowing from Aquinas he called these images `archetypes', finding them present in dreams and fantasies. Since he did not understand these symbols right away he sought out their meaning through research into Freud's work on the psychoanalysis of dream imagery and Jung's own interest in various cultural mysticisms especially religions.

Jung's quest to explain the archetypes was a success and led him to dramatically cure psychogenetic illnesses that were mistaken for something else entirely and usually thought to be incurable. Jung had found that many patients, some violently ill, were simply at odds with themselves over a traumatic experience. Jung could penetrate the trauma by simply letting the patient reveal the trauma through their own personal symbols which included elaborate fantasies. This was the dawn of psychotherapy that Freud never understood because he could not deal with his own distress. Jung on the other hand had the lucky experience of having already dealt with his own disturbances at a young age and so was already on a quest to appreciate the archetypes that Freud could never uncover in his persistent mind block after replacing God with sex as his own personal dogma. In one shocking sequence of events Jung describes how Freud fainted (which happened on several occasions when topics touching on Freud's personal issues were invoked) and as Freud carried him into the bedroom after one of the fainting spells Freud looked upon Jung as if he was his father in this exposed state his subconscious emerged for a few moments.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is the autobiography of Jung and his search for the meaning of consciousness and its manifestations including the experience of the process of itself. This is about Jung's truth, a personal truth.

Jung starts by describing his youth and the environment he was brought up in. Here he brings up memories such as dreams and imagery. He talks about the difficultly in his family over relationships and his problem with the powerlessness of men and how love was associated with something hateful. Jung experienced a phallus in a dream before he knew what a phallus was. In his Christian family he could never expose that he experienced such a thing. Vulnerable to being condemned a heathen by his parents he was afraid to discuss it and so had to psychoanalyse it for himself. His anxiety increased and his dreams become more vivid along with his growing fear of something unknown. Jung was experiencing adolescence and the secrets that come with it.

One of the secrets was so secret even Jung did not know about. It was there in the back of his mind but he was afraid to let it appear. At one point Jung finally let go of that which has been traumatically disturbing him, something he could not possibly think about because the result would have been a life threatening disaster. It comes in the form of a giant piece of holy faeces laid by God the father sitting on his thrown which crashes down onto the local church and obliterates it. Jung feels grace, believing like Abraham that he has finally submitted his will fully to God who wanted him to have this experience.

Jung believed his father's own personal problems stemmed from not allowing his thoughts to fully emerge in himself because of indoctrination (doctrine or shrugging seemed to suffice). To Jung the will of the father was simply beyond any form of indoctrination. If the will of the father is to commit the ultimate sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) then so be it even against the fear of losing salvation. That is the faith of Abraham that one needs to go beyond the conscious self to meet the maker.

Jung obviously made limited attempts to save his father from the problem of indoctrination preventing him from experiencing God. Jung would ask himself why his father did not argue out his problems with God and instead took it out on himself and his family. Shortly after he died, witnessed by Jung, his mother indicated that his father died at an appropriate time to allow Jung to continue on without the hindrance of a man who was locked up in dogma. This theme would crop up again when Jung meets Freud who also had his own "code of belief" that he could not break.

Jung's experience made him want to examine nature and eventually he pursued a career in medicine where he came across the obscure study of psychiatry.

Following this Jung covers his studies of psychiatry and goes through a number of case histories including the amazing psychoanalysis he did on Freud which comprises a whole third of the book and then the final sections where the psychoanalysis is ultimately on applied to himself.

Jung draws the conclusion that open-minded analyses is essential as is allowing one to express themselves within the realm of safety of that which is the imagination to its fullest extent. He sums this by explanation that one's alienation from the world can be transferred to one's own inner world that has revealed to him a quite unexpected familiarity with himself.

Warning: This work can be very deep and requires professional assistance if one seeks to undergo the kind of self-psychotherapy that the book goes into. Don't go it alone with professionals.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is an excellent introduction into Jung however the unbelievable value of this journey can only be fully appreciated or grasped when one understands that what the psyche can generate as unreality is not just the yellow brick road of confusion but has its own personal reality. There is order to it and the instructions are present at its primordial state even if this order is in the form of imagery, metaphors, similes or representations rather than writing or mathematical equations! Is it thus not incredible that previous attempt to understand this mystery had been trying to apply various formulas both supernatural and natural instead of just dealing with the substance as it is... consciousness.

Psychology is to evolution what quantum mechanics is to relativistic cosmology. The need for a person to explain themselves is a need as old as people themselves.

It is clear through history that there have been subsequent starts and stops in this pursuit but more importantly our understanding of it has matured as time has gone by. Jung had taken one of the most adult steps towards comprehended the unknown since Aquinas wrote "The Summa Theologica" in the thirteenth century. There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysing religion. The benefits are immense for the person reading this book and understanding religion and themselves in a very private way.

It took C.G Jung decades to realize that consciousness is a developing process. It took him decades more to conclude that this developing progress is consciousness itself and to stop right here for the time being and call this the bases for all experiences that matter to us. Like Plato's forms, this core of our mind, the subconscious or historical `soul', is almost infinite in imagination but contains an inherited structure of primordial figures and symbols that is universal to all people. Borrowing from Aquinas he called these images `archetypes', finding them present in dreams and fantasies. Since he did not understand these symbols right away he sought out their meaning through research into Freud's work on the psychoanalysis of dream imagery and Jung's own interest in various cultural mysticisms especially religions.

Jung's quest to explain the archetypes was a success and led him to dramatically cure psychogenetic illnesses that were mistaken for something else entirely and usually thought to be incurable. Jung had found that many patients, some violently ill, were simply at odds with themselves over a traumatic experience. Jung could penetrate the trauma by simply letting the patient reveal the trauma through their own personal symbols which included elaborate fantasies. This was the dawn of psychotherapy that Freud never understood because he could not deal with his own distress. Jung on the other hand had the lucky experience of having already dealt with his own disturbances at a young age and so was already on a quest to appreciate the archetypes that Freud could never uncover in his persistent mind block after replacing God with sex as his own personal dogma. In one shocking sequence of events Jung describes how Freud fainted (which happened on several occasions when topics touching on Freud's personal issues were invoked) and as Freud carried him into the bedroom after one of the fainting spells Freud looked upon Jung as if he was his father in this exposed state his subconscious emerged for a few moments.

"Memoirs, dreams and reflections" is the autobiography of Jung and his search for the meaning of consciousness and its manifestations including the experience of the process of itself. This is about Jung's truth, a personal truth.

Jung starts by describing his youth and the environment he was brought up in. Here he brings up memories such as dreams and imagery. He talks about the difficultly in his family over relationships and his problem with the powerlessness of men and how love was associated with something hateful. Jung experienced a phallus in a dream before he knew what a phallus was. In his Christian family he could never expose that he experienced such a thing. Vulnerable to being condemned a heathen by his parents he was afraid to discuss it and so had to psychoanalyse it for himself. His anxiety increased and his dreams become more vivid along with his growing fear of something unknown. Jung was experiencing adolescence and the secrets that come with it.

One of the secrets was so secret even Jung did not know about. It was there in the back of his mind but he was afraid to let it appear. At one point Jung finally let go of that which has been traumatically disturbing him, something he could not possibly think about because the result would have been a life threatening disaster. It comes in the form of a giant piece of holy faeces laid by God the father sitting on his thrown which crashes down onto the local church and obliterates it. Jung feels grace, believing like Abraham that he has finally submitted his will fully to God who wanted him to have this experience.

Jung believed his father's own personal problems stemmed from not allowing his thoughts to fully emerge in himself because of indoctrination (doctrine or shrugging seemed to suffice). To Jung the will of the father was simply beyond any form of indoctrination. If the will of the father is to commit the ultimate sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) then so be it even against the fear of losing salvation. That is the faith of Abraham that one needs to go beyond the conscious self to meet the maker.

Jung obviously made limited attempts to save his father from the problem of indoctrination preventing him from experiencing God. Jung would ask himself why his father did not argue out his problems with God and instead took it out on himself and his family. Shortly after he died, witnessed by Jung, his mother indicated that his father died at an appropriate time to allow Jung to continue on without the hindrance of a man who was locked up in dogma. This theme would crop up again when Jung meets Freud who also had his own "code of belief" that he could not break.

Jung's experience made him want to examine nature and eventually he pursued a career in medicine where he came across the obscure study of psychiatry.

Following this Jung covers his studies of psychiatry and goes through a number of case histories including the amazing psychoanalysis he did on Freud which comprises a whole third of the book and then the final sections where the psychoanalysis is ultimately on applied to himself.


You can put this to good use. Be brave. Go down deep. Tell it to someone who will listen and not condemn you.

I think Carl Jung was very ahead of his time and he was in sense an explorer like Columbus, except that his territory was the vast space of his own interior. My understanding of Jung is that he took his own explorations to the brink of psychosis in the service of understanding himself and the psyche. Whether you are a Jung fan or not, it has certainly been my experience that he has a lot of insight and wisdom to share with respect to the nature of the psyche.

This book is basically an autobiography and it is very dense reading. Jung was highly educated in a variety of fields and without some basic understanding of philosophy, major literary figures and mythology, it may be a difficult reading. However, if taken slowly, it is truly manageable and you will discover many gems.

I agree with some of the other excellent reviews that suggest that this volume presents Jung the legend more than being an objective account of his life. However, it offers a lot of insight into his thinking, major influences, etc. It is a fascinating story in itself.

I think this book is most useful and interesting to people who already know a lot about Jung. It is not the best introduction to Jung. If you want a good introduction, I would suggest Murray Stein's "Jung's Map of the Soul." Another concise introduction in Jung's own words is Aion. I would read one or both of these first before tackling this volume.

I think Carl Jung was very ahead of his time and he was in sense an explorer like Columbus, except that his territory was the vast space of his own interior. My understanding of Jung is that he took his own explorations to the brink of psychosis in the service of understanding himself and the psyche. Whether you are a Jung fan or not, it has certainly been my experience that he has a lot of insight and wisdom to share with respect to the nature of the psyche.

This book is basically an autobiography and it is very dense reading. Jung was highly educated in a variety of fields and without some basic understanding of philosophy, major literary figures and mythology, it may be a difficult reading. However, if taken slowly, it is truly manageable and you will discover many gems.

I agree with some of the other excellent reviews that suggest that this volume presents Jung the legend more than being an objective account of his life. However, it offers a lot of insight into his thinking, major influences, etc. It is a fascinating story in itself.

I think this book is most useful and interesting to people who already know a lot about Jung. It is not the best introduction to Jung. If you want a good introduction, I would suggest Murray Stein's "Jung's Map of the Soul." Another concise introduction in Jung's own words is Aion. I would read one or both of these first before tackling this volume.

This autobiography is unusual to say the least. It is replete with deep, profound, mystifying, eye-opening, tantalizing personal experiences rather than mundane happenings. It reads, at times, like a fantasy novel. I'd call this powerful book an impressionistic painting of Jung's life and work. It's very personal and very revealing. It's no wonder he left it to the very end of his life. Fortunately for us, he did provide the data & it was posthumously published. It provides a depth of context for his work that is available nowhere else. It is, however, expurgated--presumably by his family who didn't want all his dirty laundry (e.g. affairs with clients etc.) made public. After all, it was published not long after his death. There is much to learn from this book--even by those offended by it. As Jung says, p.247 "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." George MacDonald said "Those don't know England who only England know." Jung asks, p. 246 "How, for example, can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have never had the opportunity to regard our own nation from outside? Regarding it from outside means regarding it from the standpoint of another nation." Similar to his more scientific works, this one contains innovative thinking & timeless observations.

PAST--pp. 143-4 Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic--that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from outside, they would have been spared this division of themselves.

PRESENT--p. 131 To my mind, in dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient. In one analysis I can be heard talking the Adlerian dialect, in another the Freudian. The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialog demanding two partners.

FUTURE--p. 256 Man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence...Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.

If a regular person described the things that Jung describes in this biography, you'd say "this person is completely insane".

As far as I can tell, Jung was utterly insane by any definition of the term. He was having day long conversations with voices in his mind, seeing visions that you'd laugh about if someone told you. Once, he recounts going on a long trip with a friend, then decided to go home (they were days or weeks away from home, and hadn't reached their agreed upon destination) because he'd had a dream the night before. OK. You feelin' OK there, Carl? Hello? Anybody in there?...Earth to Carl!

Notwithstanding the fact he was evidently off his rocker, his ideas have been tremendously influential in a huge number of artists' lives and work, not to mention millions of "regular" folks.

In this book, he details his life long search for, and identification and exploration of the soul. He firmly believed there is a soul, and I must agree with him that those who think life doesn't have any purpose just aren't in touch. Regardless of religious belief, Jung believed the real purpose in life is to explore consciousness to the fullest during the short time we're here, and search for that little speck of light that will carry the soul into the next stage.

Mind blowing stuff to be sure. Forget about conventional organized religions. You can pray all day long to an absent God with a congregation who think they're going to "heaven" if they just do the "right thing" while keeping an angry God at bay.

But, if, on the other hand, you're on a real spiritual journey, Jung can provide your road map.

More than any other work in his oeuvre, Carl Jung's biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) takes the reader inside the mind of the eminent Swiss psychologist. Jung was both a self-admitted gnostic and an introvert, and this very personal account of his life, which he was completing at the time of his death, is correspondingly subjective in tone.

Jung had a difficult but remarkable childhood, to which he devotes a substantial portion of the text. Both blessed and plagued by heretical visions which he was unprepared to understand or interpret (among them: God defecating on a cathedral; an enormous cyclopean phallus enthroned in a subterranean chamber), Jung also found himself unable to seek advice from his father, a country parson suffering from a crisis of faith, or his mother, whom Jung believed to have a weird and "uncanny" "second personality" which only emerged at night. In time, the awkward young Carl came to believe that he had a guiding "second personality" of his own, which he perceived to belong to a mature and intellectually accomplished man of 18th century Europe (as an adult, Jung would adopt another "psychic being," whom he called "Philemon," as his personal "daimon," mentor, and guide). Already tending temperamentally towards remove from others, these experiences only acerbated Jung's boyhood sense of rural backwardness, loneliness, and social isolation.

Due to both its subjective nature and the enormous scope of Jung's experiences and speculative beliefs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections is the sort of book that hardline scientists and skeptics may scoff at, especially since Jung is largely concerned with discovering the liminal crossroads where objective truth, physical law, spirituality, and human psychology converge. Throughout his life, he also placed a tremendous value on the meaning of personal and collective dreams, both those he considered merely informational as well as those he considered prophetic and of a collective nature.

Throughout the volume, anecdotes abound of seances, extrasensory perception, automatic writing, "poltergeist" phenomena, "meaningful coincidences," alchemy, visitations from the dead, unidentified flying objects (which Jung, who never claimed to actually glimpse one, did not believe to be vehicles from other planets, though he didn't absolutely rule out the possibility), alternate dimensions, the Holy Grail, and, in one bizarre episode, a seemingly endless parade of merry-making phantom boys who pass by his lakeside home in the dead of night. Though Jung interprets this particular "haunting" in terms of local history, it's remarkable that he, who believes "the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays," doesn't consider the trooping fairies of Celtic and Germanic folklore as any equally likely explanation.

In another incident, he and companion, while traveling in Italy, spend hours admiring the interior of a cathedral, only to discover later that the mosaics they found so unforgettably beautiful did not exist, and never had existed.

As unlikely a collection of first or secondhand experiences as the anecdotes may represent, Jung never allows his narrative to lose its tight focus or relate these incidences to his larger theme: the nature, development, and evolution of human consciousness. However, in genuine gnostic fashion, he is quick to remind his readership that human perception is always ultimately subjective, and that, while "facts" certainly exist, no man can claim to know what the absolute truth is about any facet of reality.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which was completed from notes after Jung's death by associate Aniela Jaffe, does not pretend to be a work of science (and, appropriately, is not an official volume in Jung's Collected Works), and is in fact far more concerned with ethics, spirituality, faith, and consciousness. One of the book's greatest achievements is its narrative power, which never flags, no matter how potentially obtuse the point is that its author is attempting to make. Throughout, Jung's tone is also uniformly humble and sincere, and his conviction in his beliefs, electrifying.

Jung's ultimate message for mankind and mankind's future is clear: "Man's task...is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

More than any other work in his oeuvre, Carl Jung's biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) takes the reader inside the mind of the eminent Swiss psychologist. Jung was both a self-admitted gnostic and an introvert, and this very personal account of his life, which he was completing at the time of his death, is correspondingly subjective in tone.

Jung had a difficult but remarkable childhood, to which he devotes a substantial portion of the text. Both blessed and plagued by heretical visions which he was unprepared to understand or interpret (among them: God defecating on a cathedral; an enormous cyclopean phallus enthroned in a subterranean chamber), Jung also found himself unable to seek advice from his father, a country parson suffering from a crisis of faith, or his mother, whom Jung believed to have a weird and "uncanny" "second personality" which only emerged at night. In time, the awkward young Carl came to believe that he had a guiding "second personality" of his own, which he perceived to belong to a mature and intellectually accomplished man of 18th century Europe (as an adult, Jung would adopt another "psychic being," whom he called "Philemon," as his personal "daimon," mentor, and guide). Already tending temperamentally towards remove from others, these experiences only acerbated Jung's boyhood sense of rural backwardness, loneliness, and social isolation.

Due to both its subjective nature and the enormous scope of Jung's experiences and speculative beliefs, Memories, Dreams, Reflections is the sort of book that hardline scientists and skeptics may scoff at, especially since Jung is largely concerned with discovering the liminal crossroads where objective truth, physical law, spirituality, and human psychology converge. Throughout his life, he also placed a tremendous value on the meaning of personal and collective dreams, both those he considered merely informational as well as those he considered prophetic and of a collective nature.

Throughout the volume, anecdotes abound of s�ances, extrasensory perception, automatic writing, "poltergeist" phenomena, "meaningful coincidences," alchemy, visitations from the dead, unidentified flying objects (which Jung, who never claimed to actually glimpse one, did not believe to be vehicles from other planets, though he didn't absolutely rule out the possibility), alternate dimensions, the Holy Grail, and, in one bizarre episode, a seemingly endless parade of merry-making phantom boys who pass by his lakeside home in the dead of night. Though Jung interprets this particular "haunting" in terms of local history, it's remarkable that he, who believes "the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays," doesn't consider the trooping fairies of Celtic and Germanic folklore as any equally likely explanation.

In another incident, he and companion, while traveling in Italy, spend hours admiring the interior of a cathedral, only to discover later that the mosaics they found so unforgettably beautiful did not exist, and never had existed.

As unlikely a collection of first or secondhand experiences as the anecdotes may represent, Jung never allows his narrative to lose its tight focus or relate these incidences to his larger theme: the nature, development, and evolution of human consciousness. However, in genuine gnostic fashion, he is quick to remind his readership that human perception is always ultimately subjective, and that, while "facts" certainly exist, no man can claim to know what the absolute truth is about any facet of reality.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which was completed from notes after Jung's death by associate Aniela Jaffe, does not pretend to be a work of science (and, appropriately, is not an official volume in Jung's Collected Works), and is in fact far more concerned with ethics, spirituality, faith, and consciousness. One of the book's greatest achievements is its narrative power, which never flags, no matter how potentially obtuse the point is that its author is attempting to make. Throughout, Jung's tone is also uniformly humble and sincere, and his conviction in his beliefs, electrifying.

Jung's ultimate message for mankind and mankind's future is clear: "Man's task...is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

Jungs autobiography: Excellent as to understanding Jung's work, life and philosophies etc. This is the book to get if you are at all interested in Jung from an overall perspective i.e. from the cradle to the grave. I would also recommend the movie 'Matter of Heart: The Extraordinary Journey of C.G. Jung ' ASIN: B00028G6LC.

As regards the field of psychology, you will have an understanding of how his views came about and developed. You will also understand Jung's relationship and split with Sigmund Freud (Archetypes Vs Libido). Personally I think both have merit, but to ignore Jung's philosophies associated with archetypes, is a grave error indeed. I still ponder on how Jung collected information from mental patients and discovered how their dreams etc had a common archetypal base.

Even though I have a interest in psychology, the matters of the spirit are of greater importance to me. Jung's discovery of Archetypes, gave me a personal accepted understanding of the tree of life; a profound stepping stone upon the path from exotericism to mesotericism and gnosis. This is the greater message of Jung in my opinion.

Great to understanding the life of Jung and his philosophies.

As regards the field of psychology, you will at least have an understanding of Jung, his life and how his views came about. I still ponder on how Jung collected information from mental patients and discovered how their dreams etc had a common archetypal base.

Jung's discovery of Archetypes, gave me a personal accepted understanding of the tree of life. A profound stepping stone upon the path from exotericism to mesotericism and gnosis.

In the early pages of his autobiography, Jung says the most important things in his life were not the actual events that occured, but rather his psychic or unconscious life (I am paraphrasing). This book is a look at that internal life. And in sooth, there were many times during the reading of this book that I said to myself: Jung was a complete looney tune! Well, perhaps (there is speculation that at one point he suffered a nervous breakdown). But I have read and continue to read Jung with great fascination and to significant personal elucidation. I found this book to be a most enlightening direct, rather than academic or theoretical, glimpse at the psyche... highly recommended for seekers.

I am a bit conflicted over this book. On the one hand I am a great admirer or Jung - he has brought a lot to my life. His writings on and abotu Gnosticism and his Answer to Job are some of the most spiritual-awakening things I have ever read. Yet, this book I just didn't find as enlightening as these other works. Don't misunderstand - I liked it but found myself a little bored at times. However (let the contradictions cease!!) I liked the format of this book as autobiogrpahy more than most of the others I have read. I would recommend this to people who want to know about him and the way he thinks (the way he became enlightende) but I would recommend some of his others book for those looking to be enlightened!
Thanks

I enjoyed this (simply from the standpoint of its being a very well-written autobiography). Though I do not pretend to be an authority on psychology myself - I find something in Jung that is almost more spiritual than scientific. Of course, Jung will not be readily excepted in modern circles for his lack of empirical evidence - but that is not what concerns me - he is a fascinating figure and writer. All I know is there will always be something in life and science that is inexplicable - and this is what makes people like Freud and Jung live on forever - they are so willing to search for what is unknown.

This book does give a good overview of Jung's ideas, and how the developed in his life and interior thought. What I most love about this book, however is the feeling I came away with for Jung himself. It made me feel that he was a deeply compassionate, openminded and rational man, if imperfect as all men. Its greatness is that it puts a human face behind all of the science and ideas of his legacy, and gives the reader an insight of his own inner experience which one can relate to.

Admittedly, this is the most important book for those interested not only in the Jungian approach in psychology, but also in the life itself of Carl Gustav Jung. Indeed, this is an autobiography, imbedded in which is most of Jung's theories and quite an adequate outline of his cosmotheory as well.

Now, this being the book that "allows" us a glimpse into the soul of this psychologist, i was for one somewhat puzzled by the overall insight i got. While for the most part i appreciated Jung's bold approach in matters considered heavy taboos in his time (not to mention our time as well for certain particular issues), on the other side i found that Jung is self-contradicting at times, or murky, for lack of a more descriptive term.

Jung dares to look on the "other side" and consider it openly an integral part of "this" side. What others deem as "paranormal" or "supernatural" is to Jung just the other side of the same coin. He discusses the reality under the accepted reality but he is not straightforward about it. If i wanted to take it far enough I'd even say he's not honest about it. He does mince hiw words much too often and stops short of telling you what he really thinks. But this hardly undermines his openmindedness. Same goes for his treatment of religion.

In the beginning of the book he goes to great lengths in his denouncing of the western religion, and yet, all throughout the book he leaves countless hints that he's religious himself, without ever explaining in what sense. This was in my view perplexing.

The part of the book where he details his views on psychotherapy and explains how he approached his patients is definately the highlight of this book, and it should be of paramount importance for those interested in that subject area.

The last third of the book is mostly about Jung's travels. That part, might be disturbing for some, as one can sense that Jung felt some kind of well hidden superiority over the people he encountered. This superiority is often enough brought forward as his surprise over the insights these people offered him, but it still remains a mystery (at least to me) what he actually "took" from these people pertaining to their beliefs and approach in life. If anything, that is.

All criticism aside, this is still essential reading. Jung was a person torn between the desire to explore the off-limits and his fear of being ostracised by the scientific community. In the gray area within that struggle is where one discovers Jung's most thought-provoking theories because that is where he presents himself bare.

This is not a typical biography. Rather than the usual record one might expect about an individuals life, that is, chronological time, events of significance, famous personages met and their influence, etc, Jung records momentous aspects about his inner life, his life long and extraordinary relationship with the unconscious. As he states from the beginning, this book is a reflection concerning his self-realisation of the unconscious and its manifestations. In old age, he realised that so-called outward memories, the temporal existence of the senses, had faded, and what remained were memories of his inner life, which manifested in dreams and visions. He found that he could only write his life in terms of a personal myth, because he believed 'autobiography', as a form of truthful expression, was at best, unreliable. Memory, in other words, cannot be trusted. Thus, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, is a personal 'story' about a man's journey of spiritual enlightenment and self-realisation, the process of the unconscious finding expression in the outer world.

Jung's inner life was certainly extraordinary. From an early age, the sheer power of the unconscious made itself known to him in terrible visions. Jung must have been an unusually grounded child in order to withstand the psychic forces that pushed their way into his consciousness at such a young age. He survived these onslaughts, I believe, because he didn't resist them, but chose to grapple with the images, follow his instincts and, along with the violence of these images, came also a knowingness and feeling of safeness, that he was, even at a young age, following what he was meant to do. It is no wonder he became a psychiatrist, a "doctor of the soul" as he calls it; because by helping others through their personal journeys of realisation, he came to better understand his own.

At the end of Jung's life he maintained that he was not a mystic, a wise man or a sage. He admits that he drank from the stream of knowledge and life, but was not the stream itself. But what is a mystic in the traditional sense of this term? A mystic is one who, through meditation, prayer or other means, achieves direct intuitive experience of the divine. A mystic experiences these 'other realities' and brings their experiences back, in some cases, to share with the rest of us. To the mystic these experiences are real. Taking this definition at face value, Memories, Dreams and Reflections is a record of one man's intuitive experience with the divine. Jung made it his life's mission to express these experiences in such a way as to make them real, and to then formulate them into a psychological method, in the hope of helping others lost and searching for meaning in their lives. Jung was most assuredly a mystic. His writings tell us that there is something greater than ourselves within us, and our task is to grapple and understand this power, that he has chosen to call the unconscious; and by better understanding this greater part of ourselves, we can become more human.

This is a wonderful story about the inner life of a man, a mystic and original thinker.

When I first started reading this book, I was highly naïve as to what my possible reactions could be. I never realized that this book would spark an internal flame within me, causing me to yearn for more knowledge and a broader insight into many subjects. It even lead me to come to many realizations about myself and my actions that I could never explain, but turned out to be so true and conclusive.
The extremely difficult vocabulary content did not discourage me one bit, it just made my curiosity grow. Jung amazed me with the beauty of his language choice and writing style and further astonished me with this extensive knowledge on so many various subjects and interesting way of interpreting them. Jung constantly referred to literary works and ideas of other authors and always stressed his references. This was perfect because this was the first book that I've ever willingly read from cover to cover in the psychology field, and it gave me an idea of other books like this one that I could read on topics that I liked and could hand-pick.
The book was most interesting knowing that it was written in autobiography-style and at the end of Jung's life, thus giving myself (the reader) his life-experienced and life-proven philosophies. It was a very difficult read but it was well worth it. I could honestly say that sometimes I just couldn't put it down; and no other book has been able to do that for me.

Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss and former disciple of the great Sigmund Freud, was always at a loss to talk about his personal life and this book is a rare exception in this regard, although not being recognised by Jung as pertainning to his bibliography. As it happened with the publication the many letters he exchanged with Freud, this book was only publi