Psychiatric Studies

Jung's Collected Works #1

by C.G. Jung

At the turn of the last century C. G. Jung began his career as a psychiatrist. During the next decade three men whose names are famous in the annals of medical psychology influenced his professional Pierre Janet, under whom he studied at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris; Eugen Bleuler, his chief at the Burgholzli Hospital in Zurich; and Sigmund Freud, with whom Jung began corresponding in 1906. It is Bleuler, and to a lesser extent Janet, whose influence bears on the studies in descriptive and experimental psychiatry composing Volume 1 of the Collected Works. This first volume of Jung's Collected Works contains papers that appeared between 1902 and 1905. It opens with Jung's dissertation for the medical "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena," a detailed analysis of the case of an hysterical adolescent girl who professed to be a medium. This study foreshadows much of his later work and is indispensable to all serious students of his psychiatric career. The volume also includes papers on cryptomnesia, hysterical parapraxes in reading, manic mood disorder, simulated insanity, and other topics.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Science, Mental Health, Classics

286 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1957

About the author

Carl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.

Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.

Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Facing prosecution for draft resistance, I dropped out of college to avoid being pulled out after putting down tuition. Having been exposed to Volumes 9i and 9ii of the Collected Works and being challenged by them, I decided to devote some time to the study of Jung while out of school and started to acquire the volumes of the Bollingen series one by one as I read them, starting with Psychiatric Studies.

I generally like Jung's earliest professional writings because then he was still excited by developments, such as psychoanalysis, in the field and because then, as a student or intern or resident himself, he had to be concerned about their critical reception. Until 1903, when he married into a very wealthy family, Jung had to worry about his career and about making money.

The most interesting of the essays in this volume is his doctoral dissertation "On So-Called Occult Phenomena." Like so much of his later work, it has an element of dishonesty. Here it is that the medium the study focuses on was a female relative who was in love with her investigator and cousin, Jung himself. Later on, as was not so unusual in those days, the dishonesty was more on the order of disguising his own dream and analytic materials as those of patients or publishing his own artwork as the product of analysands. But, at the time of reading, I did not know this--though I did suspect, correctly, that Jung took the spiritualism involved more seriously than he let on.

Reading his dissertation led me to Flournoy's From India to the Planet Mars and other classics of the kind and ultimately to that excellent history of early depth psychologies, The Discovery of the Unconscious.

[Andrew Noselli]

This book explains that it is only a skip and a jump between feigning mental illness and the actual incursion of an existing mental disorder and thus, by extension, a clear route is established for the preparation of the work of latter-day psychotherapists like Erich Ericsson and R.D. Laing, who said that the mentally ill could be successfully engaged in the world of competency if they were treated as if they were not, in fact, suffering from mentally disorders. To me, this is a clear example of an existential theory made concrete and viable. But as Jung shows through a later discussion of outlier case histories related in the book, society's labeling of those individuals who have show a distinct sense of 'psychopathic inferiority' became the genesis for Franz Kafka's accusation against a world that marked the most highly wrought instances of human character-development as types that would later be discarded in the process of production that developed amidst the industrial wastage of creative human personality-types that were the two great world wars of the early 20th century. Three stars.

[Louna Kiorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this one. And I'll be probably coming back to write a proper review. However I had to stop by and say this was worth every minute I spent on it.

It's the second book I read of Dr. Jung's and as a medical intern that will be graduating in a few months I loved seeing the medical side of Dr. Jung. On Man and His Symbols, the writing was more condensed in a different way.
This book is very technical and concise.

One conclusion that seemed to pop-up in my mind for the later half of the book is how one lie can "break the camel's back" and how it can make you "go insane".
It's a terrible oversimplification but I couldn't shake it off for the last few day and it climaxed with Ch.5 : On simulated insanity.

I highly recommend this one! Especially if you come from the medical field and are serious about getting into Dr. Jung's work.

[Paul Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating case studies by the young Jung, including mediumistic trance, 'manic mood disorder', 'hysterical stupor' and simulated insanity.

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jung as a young psychiatrist is definitely different from Jung in his more advanced writings, but already here, at the very beginning, one can see the foundations that will guide his work, with the attraction to more spiritual materials far beyond Freud's theories which he abandoned. It is an interesting read, technical at times, very psychiatric and fascinating in itself, but not necessarily the first step into the special world of Jung that I'd take. it's a very good read as a review or looking back, once you get to know Jung's later materials.

[will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good cases in here but, Jung was younger. The eras attitude towards psychiatry is more transparent

[Kirk Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The terms are outdated, but that's part of the charm of this collection of Jung's earliest work, written during the wee hours of the early 1900s, as you can smell the lantern lights, and hear the horses in the streets, and admire the fusty three-piece suits. The titles of the articles alone -- 'On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena', 'On Hysterical Misreading', 'Cryptomnesia', 'A Case of Hysterical Stupor in Prisoner in Detention', 'On Simulated Insanity' -- are enough to induce a bliss of anticipation. Admittedly, one might expect from these titular introductions either tawdry sensationalism or dry writing in opposition to subject matter, but Jung escapes both with nary a glance. What he has presented instead is a sober-minded exploration of each topic, and somehow no matter how esoteric the subject or exotic the patient, he brings something that seems to apply to me somewhere deep inside and disturbing. The dreams I had over the weeks I read this!

[Eddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read Jung's 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections', which gave a very informative breakdown of Jung's career and evolution in thinking. I am very glad I did because it seems as though it will be a solid summary of navigating the Collected Works such that when reading the Collected Works, the reader gains insight into the individual works and studies of Jung that informed his later and subsequent thinking but with the advantage of knowing where that thinking would ultimately lead.

This first volume, for example, touches upon his early studies where it can readily be seen that he is working into his later theories of the unconscious (by means of discussing hypnotism, self-hypnotism and the legal culpability of hysterical/morally defective individuals) but without the experience and time to have yet further engaged with those theories. The seeds are definitely there and made clear to the reader, granted that they know where these theories ultimately end up.

It's a fairly quick read for those who have read Jung before, and makes me excited to read through the remaining Collected Works to further gain insight into Jung's evolution of thought.

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work has distinct sections, with the first covering a case of a spirit medium (which I read elsewhere was his cousin). He provides a psychological explanation for the experience, giving details of his the various seances he participated in.

Smaller sections discuss specific disorders such as cryptomnesia (where one recalls memories but they are not recognized as being memories) and mood disorders.

The next largest section is on criminals and simulated insanity. He gives the conclusion on some cases that the lengths some people went to (stabbing themselves, other harm) although consciously done, indicates some sort of mental illness.

While interesting and well written, it is a very clinical recount of the cases and written for his colleagues in his field. As I am not an expert in the field, it was more of a collection of curiosities for me.

[Shaun Phelps · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a couple of Jung's previous works and was pleasantly surprised to see volume 1 is a collection of case studies of varying states of psychosis and malingering. I work in this field, so the relevance is endearing. While it is a little strange to see older language and definitions, I'm struck by Jung's analysis and the surgical understanding of symptoms; with both less information available to him, and yet a higher understanding of the disorder than most clinicians today. I look forward to reading the continued evolution of Jung as he continues to grow.

[Mr. Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is young Jung, before the revelations that would lead him to the (re-)discovery of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.

For readers familiar with Jung who are curious to see the way he thought early on in his career, this book is of great interest. It contains case studies covering the areas of occult phenomenon, madness, and criminal behavior.

This is not an introductory work. If you are new to reading Jung, start with something like Man and His Symbols or Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

[Anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides several case studies from ~1900, attempting to answer questions surrounding the existence of the unconscious mind and more specifically its role in driving the behavior of the mental ill. I found it very, very interesting.

5 stars with the caveat that this is a collection of papers with a common theme, and lacks the continuity of a single document.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Case studies. Skimmed.

Case study early on relating to somnambulism that should scare the shit out of people that drink themselves to blackout. It is reasonably considered a psychiatric case.

I quit drinking a year ago after multiple and extended experiences with blacking out and doing multiple activities without remembering any of them. In the beginning I laughed it off as youthful innocent fun, but I eventually realised that such a conceptualisation is highly propagandised and filled with many defence mechanisms on my part.

Drinking yourself to a blackout, especially if you don’t pass out but keep going, is extremely serious and should be a warning sign to the unconscious alcoholic. He is about to crash hard if he doesn’t wake up to his deep and un-integrated troubles of the soul.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting to see Jung's earliest writings. I found his Doctoral thesis very enjoyable.

[Blake B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Early Jung, love watching his ideas slowly manifest through his empirical data as they mount their collision course with modern man.

[Miceál Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise review of case studies most relevant to the pressing psychiatric questions of the time (1900). In this first volume, the assemblers of the Collected Works have succeeded in making accessible Jung's professional monographic contributions to the emerging field of psychiatry in its true historical context.

[M●13RA · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.8/10

[Jaakko Määttä · Rating 3 out of 5]

A peculiar collection of essays written during the early career of Carl Jung. The most interesting was Jungs' thoughts about somnambulism, that he did not use as a synonym to sleepwalking. Somnambulism, to him, was a condition seen in many illnesses of the mind i.e. neuroticism or hysteria.
In the end, 4/5, Advanced thinking for the time, but certainly very axiomatic with little reliance on the systematic study of the actual patients; although the patients were surely his inspiration.

[Kjǫlsigʀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where Jung 'paid his dues' in (often tedious but never pointless) clinical groundwork - this material is not as exciting as the later maturation of his ideas, but here is where Jung began to gather some of the data he would work with throughout his life's work.