Carl Jung

He died in 1961 after a brief illness.

He was born as the son of Paul Achilles Jung and Emilie Preiswerk. He was their fourth but the only surviving child. His father was a rural pastor.

His mother was eccentric and suffered from depression. She was a strange and mysterious woman who claimed to be visited by spirits at night. He had a strained relationship with her because of her mental problems.

His strained relationship with his often absent, moody and depressed mother shaped his attitude towards women in general.

As a child he suffered from multiple personality disorder and was convinced that had two personalities—a modern Swiss citizen and the other more in tune with eighteenth century.

A classmate pushed him hard to the ground when he was 12 years old. This resulted in his having fainting spells whenever he tried to go to school. As a result he stayed home for several months before rejoining school.

He was appointed an assistant at the the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital, Zurich, under Professor Eugen Bleuler upon his graduation in 1900.

In 1903 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich. His doctoral dissertation was titled ‘On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena’.

Starting from 1905, he began lecturing on psychiatry at the University of Zurich. This continued up to 1913.

He published ‘Studies in Word Association’ in 1906 and sent a copy to the renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud. This marked the beginning of a friendship that would last six years.

Jung and Freud met for the first time in 1907—Freud was like a father figure to the much younger Jung and would greatly influence his formative years. Jung wrote ‘The Psychology of Dementia Praecox’ the same year.

He founded the school of analytical psychology or Jungian psychology which aims to analyze human psychology in its wholeness through the integration of unconscious forces and motivations present in the human subconscious.