today.”43
A major influence on the more clinically-minded Jung is that of the French dissociationist psychiatrist, Pierre Janet. Jung studied under Janet and the latter pioneered theories of dissociation and fixed ideas, which Jung termed ‘complexes’. Jung agreed with a great
deal of what Janet pioneered but Jung also embraced the artistic and creative side of life. Hence Jung went beyond Janet who was “clearly no Romantic.”44 The work of John R Haule is scholarly and studies the link between analytical psychology and Janet’s dissociationist psychology.45 Janet is more relevant than Freud as an influence on Jung, as Jung valued the principle of dissociation as sovereign over repression although he recognized both of those principles. And, as said, Jung recognized Freud as a pioneer of the unconscious.46
Interested thinkers often point out that Jung himself was a childhood neurotic. This may be seen as a slight digression because this establishes a personal context for analytical psychology as opposed to the multitude of impersonal historical contextual influences. However, it is the other key factor in establishing a sketch of the context of analytical psychology, therefore it needs saying. Jung had a father complex. Carl Jung’s father is portrayed as an authoritarian and dogmatic Christian who had repressed doubts about his faith. And Jung is regarded as having been a childhood neurotic in both Jungian and psychoanalytical literature. For example in the latter, Winnicott reads Memories, Dreams, Reflections as evidence of Jung as a childhood schizophrenic, a divided-self in search of a self-identity.47 In the Jungian literature, Michael Fordham, who helped compile
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