What's the difference between pop-newage-Jung and the true Carl Gustav Jung?
“Thank God, I’m Jung, and not a Jungian.”
So he is said to have sighed, psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. (It’s been 60 years since he passed away, I see. Yesterday was his birthday.) Does anyone know what he was referring to? I don’t know really, but I can speculate. That he noticed that some of his concepts and ideas, which were bold from start, were derailed at the hands of some of his followers.
Some years ago I visited the Psychotherapy Fair in Stockholm, and I walked around there. Ended up in front of the Swedish Jungian Society’s (can they be called so?) small booth, with brochures and such. Two women behind the table greeted me. I got the feeling that not many people used to stop. I guess I said something vague, that I didn’t know much about Jung, but had heard the expression “the collective unconscious” among other things…
They seemed to be a little embarrassed. One of them returned to what she was doing before I showed up, a little half absent. “Yes, the term is used a lot, imaginatively, but that’s not really what we mean by that,” they just said.
So, does anyone have an eye on it? What’s the difference between pop-newage-Jung and the true Carl Gustav Jung?