Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung

A Book Review

I'm surprised I've only recently gotten around to reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung. I take that back; I'm not surprised. Often, I find myself jumping head-first into the most challenging work possible, and then, once I've been sufficiently confused and awestruck, I decide to review the fundamentals. Can't say it's a bad way to go about it; it's certainly interesting. So, more accurately, part of me feels slight regret that I didn't read Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR) earlier. However, I've gotten a lot out of the read. So much that I'm 6,000 words into the first draft of a commentary on the most insightful parts. I will be serializing that commentary here, so don't touch that dial.

For my dear readers, before I start publishing commentaries that get into the minutia of this classic autobiography, I will introduce the vibe contained therein to convince you this book should be on your shelf tomorrow and read immediately. After you read it, we can then have a proper philosophical conversation.

MDR is a partially autobiographical book published in German in 1962, one year after Jung died at 85 years old. It's co-written by Aniela Jaffe partly because Jung was physically ill-equipt for the task of writing and partially because he didn't desire to cooperate with Jaffe's plans to complete the work. Eventually, Jung became convinced that the work was important and personally wrote parts of the book (early memories, travels, and late thoughts in particular). It's a profoundly personal autobiography colored by intentions stated in the prologue. On page three, Jung says,

"Whether or not the stories are "true" is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth."

On page five, completes the thought,

"Recollection of the outward events of my life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters with the "Other" reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved upon my memory."

In other words, the man known as Carl Jung is not the focus of this book. Instead, the focus of this book is the inner life of a man named Carl Jung. It's a subtle difference between the two, but a perceptible thread connecting each page to the next. This stance is admirable as too many autobiographies retell events to fit a particular narrative the author believes about themselves; Winston Churchill comes to mind.

In the 1988 book Freud: A Life for Our Time, Peter Gay comments that Memories, Dreams, Reflections is well-titled, given that it emphasizes dreams and "like many autobiographies, it is more revealing than the author meant it to be." I agree. Jung was an explorer, talented scientist, and brilliant theorist who, like Shakespeare, invented things that we all say today and are so common we don't know where they came from. Anybody interested in modern (or, dare I say, post-modern) thought, psychology, the hard problem of consciousness, or the mysteries of life needs to be aware of Jung's work. Any extra revelations of what was happening behind his published work's curtain is valuable information.

Jung tackled many difficult and seemingly un-scientific phenomena and ideas in his professional work. From UFOs to parapsychology, mythology, and religion, Jung would go looking if he felt something important to be found. No stranger to the weird, Jung's dissertation was titled On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (1903). Only 10 years later, at the age of 38 and after splitting with Freud, Jung experienced his "Confrontation with the Unconscious," another kind of occult phenomena. We can read this work compiled in the Red and Black Books. This period of self-discovery lasted until 1921 with the publication of Psychological Types. On page 199, Jung says,

"It has taken me virtually forty-five years to distill within the vessel of my scientific work the things I experienced and wrote down at the time."

As one familiarizes themselves with Jung's work, one can see something esoteric driving his work. The question will inevitably arise: "But what did he actually think about all this?" MDR answers many of those questions.

The Red Book is where I began getting to know Jung's ideas. I had yet to learn what I was reading, and the work never explained itself. I found only an impression of the importance and intention behind the words. Jung says on page 193,

"The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life."

It's that ethical responsibility the reader senses in the Red Book. The gravity Jung felt about his work comes through in many ways throughout MDR, as well. Jung's intellectual integrity came through most presciently when recounting the writing of the book, which cost him his relationship with Freud. He says on page 167,

"For two months I was unable to touch my pen, so tormented was I by the conflict. Should I keep my thoughts to myself, or should I risk the loss of so important a friendship? At last, I resolved to go ahead with the writing – and it did indeed cost me Freud's friendship."

This is inspiring.

MDR comes across as very much of Jung's mind. Jung has a particular mythopoetic way of writing, which remains grounded in a rational methodology and doesn't take itself too seriously. I have the sense that, in another place and time, Jung was the kind of person you could find hanging upside-down from a pipe in a parking garage at 3 am and when asked what he was doing, would say, "Why, haven't you heard the rumors? People report the most strange and interesting things happening here; I considered it folly for the longest time, but like a knock in an engine, I kept thinking of it and just had to know for myself what this was all about!" At that moment, his interlocutors would know that things are exactly as they should be. Jung was deeply in touch with the playful side of human nature and took his inner child seriously. The openness and curiosity he had toward conscious existence is something I aspire to, and you should, too. 

I resonated deeply with Jung's childhood memories, felt an intense empathy with his thoughts when his wife, Emma, passed away, and laughed out loud from genuinely hilarious and unexpected wit. Proof that even while battling the gods, demons, and prophesies of the subconscious, retaining an everyday life and a genuine sense of humor is possible, if not necessary. Life is meant to be playful and full of meaning, so there's no need to carry one's burden so heavily on the mind all the time. 

MDR pairs well with The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and reading Jung's Red Book for five minutes, putting it down because you're confused but picking it up again the next day.