Worked at Burgholzli, a psychiatric hospital in Zurich.Studied science and medicine at the University of Basel, graduating in 1900.He tried to understand the terrible collective energies that drove the two great events of his life, World War I and II. He also put his culture and times “on the couch” – or rather, in a chair, as he was the first psychotherapist to sit opposite his patients, like a counsellor.

Why is it that the calmest people curse and swear when driving in traffic? Why is it that upright citizens sometimes commit crimes of passion? Jung had an answer – we all carry a shadow. The shadow side of your character is that part of you which is normally hidden, but sometimes leaps out, catching you unawares. Personality tests, such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, draw directly from them. He coined introvert for someone who needs quality time on their own and extrovert (although Jung spelled it “extravert”) for the person who never feels better than when in a crowd. The Swiss psychologist devised a series of personality types. Have you ever discussed whether you were introverted or extroverted? Undergone a personality test on a training course? Wondered what lurks in the shadow side of your character? Carl Jung is the person to thank.

But what would he make of the 21st century so far, asks Mark Vernon. Alongside Sigmund Freud, he is arguably one of the two people of the 20th century who most shaped the way we think about who we are. “The afternoon of life must have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage of life’s morning,”Ĭarl Gustav Jung died 50 years ago today. I came across this article on the BBC web site, and was intrigued, so have reproduced it in its entirety: What Carl Jung would have made of the world today

Freud & Jung by Anthony Stevens