This time-line resulted from my search for the fundamentals of Jung's psychology: I wanted to discover for myself where Jung started and how he got to that model of the psyche which we today call "Jungian Psychology."

Foreword

This time-line resulted from my search for the fundamentals of Jung's psychology: I wanted to discover for myself where Jung started and how he got to that model of the psyche which we today call "Jungian Psychology." In fact, my first Jungian paper bore the title, "Is There Such a Thing as Jungian Psychology?" (1)

Jungian tradition holds that Jung evolved his psychology from Freud's psychoanalysis. In the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Jung, Michael Fordham describes Jung as a "Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, in some aspects a response to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis." In the film "The Wisdom of the Dream," Stephen Segaller is more blatant:

Professionally, Jung was following the lead of Sigmund Freud, the Viennese originator of psychoanalysis and the study of the unconscious. Jung and Freud first met in 1909 [sic!] . . . Jung was the pupil and Freud the master.

Complicating matters further, every Jungian has a different perspective on that psychology. In the film, "Matter of Heart," three well-known "Jungians" tell the listeners what they believe to have been Jung's primary focus. Lilliane Frey-Rohn speaks of Jung's being interested in "the super-natural food;" Barbara Hannah says that Jung was "above all, interested in wholeness;" and Laurens Van der Post calls Jung an old "African witchdoctor." (2) In the popular mind, Jungians deal with typology, mythology, dreams, individuation, and the collective unconscious.

To answer the question of Jung's origins, I read Jung's writings chronologically, in the order in which he had written them. Beginning with his doctoral dissertation, "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena," I read everything Jung wrote up to 1935, the date of his lectures at the Tavistock Clinic. Whenever I encountered a theory or what looked as if it might have been a precursor of a theory, I took note of it.

Intertwined with my initial question concerning Jung's origins were others. What fundamental aspects of his psychology did he arrive at in the decade from 1900 to 1910, from 1910 to 1920, and so on? At what point and in what context did he set forth the specific theories which today are so central to Analytical Psychology?

Aside from the answers to those questions, I discovered much I had not anticipated. At first blush, I realized how poorly R. F. C. Hull captured Jung's "voice" in his English translations for The Collected Works. Reading the first English translations of the writings, I came to appreciate Jung's earlier translators: Beatrice Hinkle, Constance Long, M. D. and Edith Eder, H. G. Baynes, Stanley Dell, and, perhaps the least acknowledged contributor to the Jungian tradition, Cary Fink de Angulo Baynes. (Mrs. Baynes' most popular translation is Richard Wilhelm's I Ching. (3) ) Through their language, I rediscovered Jung's paradoxical combination of the utterly earthy and the fantastically conceptual.

My chronological, decade-by-decade reading threw into sharp relief the evolution of Jung's concepts. Jung would pick up an idea from somewhere, anywhere, and integrate it into his model. He was an intellectual pack rat. Theodore Flournoy, Pierre Janet, William James, Heraclitus, Jakob Burckhardt, St. Augustine, Robert Mayer, Lvy-Bruhl, and many, many others made unwitting contributions to Jung's psychology. Often Jung's applications, though, bore little resemblance to the originator's thinking. Heraclitus would be most surprised to have been credited with the term enantiodromia, and Jung's concept of the "lowering of the threshold of consciousness" bears little resemblance to Janet's abaissement du niveau mental! (4) Yet, they all served as grist for Jung's milling of his psychology.

And mill ideas Jung did! Particularly during the years 1910 to 1930, he tried first one way and then another of conceptualizing his experience. His theory of archetypes is a telling example.

Beginning with Jakob Burckhardt's concept of primordial images in 1912 (Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido), Jung wrestled with the notion of universal patterns for almost thirty years. (5) In 1917, he called them "dominants of the supra-personal unconscious" (6) and "cosmic, universally-human images." (7) When, in 1919, he hit upon the term, archetype, Jung felt more comfortable attributing it to St. Augustine. (8) In 1921, he briefly experimented with engram, (9) the Latin equivalent of the Greek tupos (typos, "type"). Still, Augustine remained the reference for the concept through the mid-1930's. (In 1948, Jung finally confessed, "S. Augustinus does not use 'archetypus' as I once erroneously surmised . . ." (10)) In "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1934), Jung further refined his thinking about universal images, distinguishing between archetypes on one hand and Lvy-Bruhl's "collective representations" on the other. (11) As late as "On the Nature of the Psyche" (1946), Jung felt compelled to differentiate "archetype" from "archetypal image." (12)

I was struck by the extent to which Jung's psychology developed or evolved. It did not emerge full blown—Athena-like—from Jung's mind. The typology is a case in point.

Today, we know the typology as a construct of two attitude types—introvert and extrovert—and four functions: thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. Jung's first concept, though, of the typology was simply the pair of opposites, extroversion and introversion. (13) Four years later—in 1917—he added thinking and feeling, but continued with a paired structure: extroversion/feeling and introversion/thinking. (14) Only with Psychological Types (1921), did he arrive at the two type, four function paradigm. (15)

Two other concepts which Jung developed during the period 1913-1921 bear the stamp of the types and functions: archetypes and the transcendent function. One might suspect that he was attempting a complete model of the psyche with these structures. The only specific indication we have, though, is from Kristine Mann's notes of the 1923 Cornwall Seminar. There Mann reports Jung saying about the functions,

We can get horizontal orientation from these four modes. But vertical orientation, i.e., the fourth dimension is time. That is growth, the possibility of orientation in time. This is the 'transcendent finction' [sic!]." (16)

How Jung imagined the archetypes might combine with the types and functions and the transcendent function, we unfortunately will never know.

While there are numerous questions to which the Time Line does not provide answers, it does offer an overview of Jung's theoretical development. It simplifies, for instance, differentiating Jung's origins from Freudian psychoanalysis. If concepts such as the dissociability of the psyche and personification of psychic entities appear as early as 1902 in Jung's writing, his completed model no more resembles Freud's than it does Adler's. Nor did it find its origin in Freud. For Freud, the unconscious was the psychopathological, polymorphous-perverse id. For Jung, the collective unconscious was the very cornerstone and familiar spirit of the individuation process.

Time Line

1902

Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (17)

Historical Aspects
1.) Jung's doctoral dissertation
2.) influenced by and a defense of Flournoy's work, India to the Planet Mars (1900)
3.) based on earlier, personal experience with his cousin, Helly Preiswerk

Theoretical Aspects
1.) dissociability of psyche
2.) personification of psychic entities: grandfather, Ulrich von Gerbenstein, Ivennes
3.) psychic reality
4.) teleological (prospective) aspect of psyche
5.) "Ivennes" a forerunner of the Self as the greater, future personality.

1904

"The Associations of Normal Subjects" (18)

Historical Aspects
1.) during residency at Burghölzli
2.) to provide control data for Bleuler's association studies with schizophrenics
3.) within the framework of other association studies, i.e., Wundt, Aschaffenburg
4.) within the philosophical framework of association versus dissociation of ideas
5.) sent a copy to Freud

Theoretical Aspects
1.) basis for theory of complexes, Ziehen's "feeling-toned groups of associations"
2.) reaffirms Jung's identity with "non-ego" psychology, i.e., the French School and the dissociationists
3.) confirms autonomy of unconscious (non-ego psychic components)
4.) verifies Freud's theory of repression in Jung's view

1906

The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (19)

Historical Aspects
1.) sent a copy to Freud—resulted in Freud's invitation to visit Vienna
2.) result of Jung's work with schizophrenic patients

Theoretical Aspects
1.) distances himself from universality of sexuality in Freud's libido theory
2.) uses "psychic energy" as more general term for libido (20)

1912

Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido
Transformations and Symbols of the Libido (21)

Historical Aspects
1.) based on paper co-authored by Flournoy and his student, Frank Miller
2.) tradition considers the final blow in separation from Freud

Theoretical Aspects
1.) differentiates Jung's psychology from Freud's relative to the supra-personal nature of the unconscious (22)
2.) mythopoetic nature of the psyche
3.) "split," psychic duality, two kinds of thinking, dual mother, etc.
4.) first elaboration of "the problem of opposites"
5.) collective nature of the unconscious, "primordial image"
6.) precursor of Self, "smaller than small, greater than great"

1913

"A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types" (23)

Historical Aspects
1.) delivered at October 1913 conference on psychoanalysis in Munich
2.) last time Freud and Jung were together (24)
3.) first paper on types

Theoretical Aspects
1.) differentiation from Freud's theory in terms of the multiplicity of psyche
2.) initial understanding and resolution of the "problem of opposites"
3.) identified attitude types, introversion and extroversion
4.) reaffirmed dissociationist—i.e., polymorphous—model of psyche

1913

"On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology" (25)

Theoretical Aspects
affirmed the compensatory function of unconscious contents

1913

"The Theory of Psychoanalysis" (26)

Historical Aspects
1.) Jung's second series of American lectures—presented at Fordham University (1912)—subsequent to the 1909 trip with Freud
2.) a critical piece in Jung's differentiation of his psychology from Freud's (27)

Theoretical Aspects
1.) energic differentiation from Freud— psychic energy as quantitative, not qualitative as per Freud's libido theory
2.) Jung's full elaboration of the distinctions between his model of the psyche and Freud's
3. ) distinguishes between libido as exclusively sexual energy versus libido as desire in general on the basis of his work with schizophrenia and Freud's with hysteria
4.) identifies the purposive function of neurosis
5.) fundamental statement of Jung's theory of neurosis

1914

"The Psychology of Dreams" (28)

Theoretical Aspects
posits the compensatory function of dreams

1916

"The Transcendent Function" (29)

Historical Aspects
1.) written while on military service during WW I
2.) not published until 1957

Theoretical Aspects
1.) first resolution of the "problem of opposites," i.e., unifying function of symbol-forming process
2.) first discussion of his "technique" for relating to unconscious contents, i.e., active imagination, although did not use that term until ca. 1935

1916

"Psychology of the Unconscious Processes" (30)

Historical Aspects
1.) revision of 1912, "New Paths in Psychology"
2.) precursor of the first of Two Essays (1928)

Theoretical Aspects
1.) teleological aspects of neurosis
2.) typology: extroversion linked with feeling, introversion with thinking
3.) distinction between the "personal" and the "impersonal" unconscious"
4.) Robert Mayer's "conservation of energy" applied to the psyche
5.) "absolute," "superpersonal," "collective" unconscious
6.) additional resolution of the "problem of opposites:" enantiodromia—regulating function of antithesis
7.) transcendental (sic!) function mentioned for the first time in publication
8.) subject/object level of dream interpretation
9.) "dominants" of the super-personal unconscious (archetype precursor)
10.) "individuation" suggested by name

1917

"The Concept of the Unconscious" (31)

Historical Aspects
1.) first version of the second of Two Essays
2.) Jung's attempt to summarize his psychology

Theoretical Aspects
1.) differentiation between "personal" and the "impersonal" unconscious
2.) individuation
3.) persona as mask and "personality"
4.) intuition identified as a function, but not yet part of typological structure

1919

"Instinct and the Unconscious" (32)

Theoretical Aspects
introduced the term "archetype" for the inherited patterns of human perception

1921

Psychological Types (33)

Historical Aspects
1.) completion of "psychology of consciousness" model
2.) never revised (added definition of "Self" in 1961)
3.) Jung considered it the final statement in his theory of psychic energy
4.) only work in The Collected Works not translated by R. F. C. Hull: H. G. Baynes did the translation

Theoretical Aspects
1.) posits "unifying symbol" as the resolution of the "problem of opposites"
2.) elaborate discussion of opposites in wide variety of fields
3.) provides definitions of his terminology up to this point (34)
4.) advances a theory of conscious functioning (typology) as a spin-off of his work on opposites

1928

"Commentary" in Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden Flower (35)

Historical Aspects
1.) culmination of his work (begun in early twenties) with Richard Wilhelm and exploration of Eastern spirituality
2.) first discussion of an "alchemical text" and a harbinger of his theoretical direction over the next thirty years
3.) Jung's "Liverpool dream" (the flowering tree on an island in the middle of a pond, in the middle of the city square) serves as imaginal evidence for the notion of the Self and the significance of the mandala pattern

Theoretical Aspects
1.) finalizes his concept of the Self
2.) more detailed elaboration of approaching unconscious, the "technique" (active imagination, still not mentioned by name)
3.) completes his working model of the psyche

March 2000

Notes

1. Money, Food, Drink, and Fashion and Analytic Training, The Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Fellbach-Oeffingen, 1983, pp. 189-198.
2. Transcript of the film, pp. 3-4.
3. Princeton, 1950/1990.
Mrs. Baynes recorded the notes for what is now, Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1925, Princeton, 1989. In addition, she co-translated Two Essays on Analytical Psychology and Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928) with H. G. Baynes, translated The Secret of the Golden Flower (1931), and co-translated Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), with Stanley Dell.
4. Jung probably took the notion of a conscious threshold from Frederick Myers' "subliminal psychology." Myers is best known for describing the "mythopoetic function" of the psyche. See, Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 314.
5. Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, rewritten in 1952 as Symbols of Transformation. The first English translation bore the title, Psychology of the Unconscious.
6. "Psychology of the Unconscious Processes," Collected Papers, 1917, p. 426. "These dominants are the rulinig powers, the gods . . . the representations resulting from dominating laws and principles" (p. 432). (Also, CW 7, 151.)
7. Also, "inherited world-images . . ." "Psychology of the Unconscious Processes," Collected Papers, 1917, p. 438.
8. "Instinct and the Unconscious," Contributions to Analytical Psychology, 1928, p. 279.
9. Psychological Types (1921/53), p. 211. Also CW 6, 281. "Engram" occurs only four times in Jung's writings, all of the references save one in Two Essays ( 159) coming in Psychological Types: 281, 405, 412.
10. Letter to Victor White of September 24, 1948, C. G. Jung Letters, 1906-1950, (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1973, p. 507: "S. Augustinus does not use 'archetypus' as I once erroneously surmised, only the idea, but it occurs in Dionysius Areopagita."
See also, "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9, i, 5. Although delivered initially in 1934 as an Eranos Lecture, Jung revised the paper twenty years later.
Jacobi notes that Jung "was drawn to the term above all by St. Augustine's definition of the ideae principales, the Latin equivalent of the Greek a??et?p?a?." The Psychology of C. G. Jung, 1942/1968, pp. 39-40.
11. "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," Integration of the Personality, trans. S. Dell, 1939, pp. 53-54.
12. "On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, 417.
13. In 1913, "A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types," Collected Papers, 2nd ed., 1917, pp. 287-298.
14. "The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes," Collected Papers, 1917, p. 439.
15. See also my "Typology's Distractions and Opposites' Attraction," Spring 54, 1993, pp. 42-55.
16. "Dr. Jung's Seminar at Polzeath, Cornwall, July 14-July 23, 1923: Notes taken by Kristine Mann," p. 6.
17. Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, trans. M. D. Eder, 2nd edn, pp. 1-93. [Also CW 1, pp. 3-88. New translation, some editing.]
18. Studies in Word-Association, trans. M. D. Eder. New York: Moffat, Yard, 1918. [Also CW 2, pp. 3-196. Different translation.]
19. Trans. by F. Peterson and A. A. Brill. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, 1909. [A later version of this work, translated only by Brill, appeared from the same publisher in 1936. [Also, CW 3, pp. 1-151. New translation.]
20. Jung's use of "psychic energy" or "energy" in this piece is extremely subtle, perhaps due to his pandering in the monograph to Freud and Freud's theories. "Psychic energy" appears only once in Dem. Prae., page 43 ( 103, CW III) and the more general term "energy" appears twice: pages 50-60 ( 137-138, CW III). Jung does not discuss the distinction at all. His full-scale differentiation and argument does not come until "The Theory of Psychoanalysis." (Dementia Praecox, trans. A. A. Brill, 1936).
21. Psychology of the Unconscious, trans. Beatrice Hinkle. New York: Moffat, Yard, and Company, 1916. [Also as Supplementary Volume B of The Collected Works, Princeton University Press, 1991.]
22. In 1912-1913 Jung differentiated his model of the psyche from Freud's in three, primary ways:
a. supra-personal vs. personal—Wandlungen u. Symbole der Libido
b. energic—psychic energy as life energy, not sexual (quantitative vs. qualitative)—Theory of Psycho-analysis
c. multiplicity of the psyche—"Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types" (also implicit in "a.")
23. Collected Papers, 2nd edn., trans. C. E. Long, pp. 287-298. First paper on types. [Also CW 6, pp. 400-509. New translation.]
24. This was presumably the meeting which Jung, in Memories, Dreams Reflections, calls the 1912 conference in Munich. He relates the story of Freud's fainting at lunch. There was no 1912 Munich conference, only an executive meeting to plan the later conference. See Gerhard Wehr, Jung: A Biography. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1987, pp. 149-150.
25. Collected Papers, 2nd edn., trans. C. E. Long, pp. 278-286. [Also CW 3, pp. 203-210. Revised.]
26. Trans. M. D. Eder. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, 1915. [Also as CW 4, pp. 83-226. "No essential alterations."]
27. Along with Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912) and "A Contribution to the Study of Psychological Types" (1913)
28. Collected Papers, 2nd edn., trans. Dora Hecht, pp. 299-311. [Also as "General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW 8, pp. 237-280. Greatly expanded 1928, 1948.]
29. Privately printed by the Students' Association, C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, trans. A. R. Pope, foreword J. Hillman, 1957, pp. 1-23. [Also CW 8, pp. 67-91. Revised and expanded.]
30. Collected Papers, 2nd. edn., trans. Dora Hecht, pp. 352-444. [Also as "On the Psychology of the Unconscious," CW 7, pp. 3-122. Revised and expanded.]
31. Collected Papers, 1917, pp. 445-474.
32. Contributions to Analytical Psychology, 1928, pp. 270-281.
33. Pantheon Books, New York, 1923 (English translation). It appeared in subsequent editions until 1953. Also as CW 6.
34. Since Jung had not finalized his concept of the archetypes and, therefore, of the Self in 1921, these definitions are more a status report on his psychology. Individuation, too, is a primary concept at which Jung arrived later.
35. Trans. C. F. Baynes, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931. "Revised and augmented" edition, 1962.

© 2000 Gary V. Hartman.

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