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'I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals' Carl Jung An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings. In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.… (more)
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For much of his early life at school Jung was preoccupied with concepts of Christian doctrine, his father being a village pastor who in Jung's estimation preached Christianity by rote without ever understanding it, and of his own accord studied German philosophers to better understand the world and man's place in it. Whilst still at school he read Kant, Schopenhauer and Goethe; by university he discovered von Hartmann and Nietzsche, though "the clinical semesters that followed kept me so busy that scarcely any time remained for my forays into outlying fields. I was able to study Kant only on Sundays." [p.122] As a child he also observed in himself a neurosis and in his mother a hidden personality that surfaced from time to time to speak words of wisdom, foundations for his later psychiatric work.
It does give a fair amount of insight into the gent, though I must say that there were times when I thought that he rambled a bit.
What I like, is the style of writing. Easy to read and follow. I was expecting turgid prose.
Read a chapter a day. Else, it can get a bit confusing, especially if you have other things to do!