Jung, C. G. - Psychology and the Occult (Routledge, 2008)

The o ccult was in the forefront of Jung ' s interest from the v er y

beginning o f his pro fessional career, a n d before. At the behest o f

h i s chief, the great psy chia trist Eugen Bleuler, J ung w r o t e his

M . D . disser tation on " The Psy chology and Pathology of SoCalled

O ccult Phenom ena, " • published in 1902, and evidently

c omposed after he became an assistant physician at the Burgholzli

H o spi tal in 1 9 0 0 . In psy chi a tric terms, he describe d several

clinical cases of double consciousness, t w ilight states, and som nam

b ulism, then presented in detail the case of an adolescent

girl m e dium, w ho s e seances he had witnessed in the m i d 1 890's.

He sought to account clinically for the visions experienced by

this y o ung w om a n, and cites the theory of cryp tomnesia, the

coming into consciousness o f unrecognized memor y -i m a g es - a

r eference, obviously, to the unconsci ous . In Jung's conclusion to

the m onog raph, there is an allusion to what sounds v ery close to

the collective unconscious . "I w a ded through the occult literature

' In the present selection.

so far as i t p ertained to this subject [the root idea of the girl's

v i sions], and discovered a wealth of parallels w i t h our gnostic

system, dating from different centuries, but scattered about i n all

kinds of w o r k s, most of them qui te inaccessible to the p a tient"

(par. 149).

Several years earlier, in 1 897, while an undergraduate a t Basel

U ni v ersi ty, J ung discussed the occul t in a lecture to the Zofi ng i a

Society, a student club .' Speaking in 1 897 on the general subject

of p sy chology, the 2 2 -y ear-old Jung said that the soul does exist,

it is intelligent and immor tal, not subject to time and space. H e

declared the reality o f spiri ts a n d spiri tuali sm , on the evidence o f

telekinesis, messages o f dying people, hy pnotism, clairv oyance,

second sight, and prophetic dream s .

I n February 1 905, Jung gave a lecture a t h i s a l m a mater, Basel

University, " O n Spiri tualistic Phenom ena " - a l engthy discourse

in w h i c h he surveyed the history and p s y chology of the subject

in A m erica and England as well as on the C ontinent . He drew

upon a broad range o f liter a ture - Schopenhauer, Swedenborg,

Mesmer, Kant, Kerner, Krafft - Ebing, and the famous English

phy sicist Sir W i l l i a m Crookes, whose observ a tions of levitation

had impressed J un g particularly . Jung himsel f had investiga ted

eight m ediums in Zuri ch; in general, he was unimpressed, diagnosing

b o th hys teria and auto-hypnosis in most instances.'

Two and a half years later, in a letter of Nov . 2, 1 907,' Jung

told Freu d that because of his services a s an occul tist he had been

elected a n honorary fellow of the American Society for P sy chical

Research- nearly two years before he first visited America