Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Carl Gustav Jung is known for incorporating ideologies from multiple disciplines to develop his ideas about analytical psychology, archetypes, and mythologies. Throughout his life, Jung resisted narrow definitions and limited ways of thinking. As a young doctor, he was critical of his colleagues who emphasized personal glory over the hard work of ongoing treatment. Instead, Jung believed that radical openness and critical self-reflection could unlock the secrets of consciousness. While his colleagues dismissed Sigmund Freud’s dream interpretation, Jung found in Freud’s theories connections to his own ideas. The young psychoanalyst pursued research with the same emphasis toward wholeness represented in his philosophy.

By putting his views into daily practice, Jung pursued atypical avenues of research and inquiry, including the studies of alchemy, architecture, and mysticism—all of which straddle the line between the spheres of science and mythology. Jung’s approach offered a counter-reaction to the focus on rationalism that characterized the Enlightenment. The recurring symbolic figures or motifs that form Jung’s philosophy about consciousness have numerous connections to art. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung asserts that myth offers a more precise image of the human experience than pure empirical science.