I was expected, Jung explained, never under any circumstances to allow myself to be irritated by his anger, nor by his occasional “grumbling,” his roarings and cursings! ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 102.
Jung’s health and vitality had been weakened by an attack of amoebic dysentery in India in 1938, and a severe cardiac infarct in 1944 was the next blow life dealt him. “It was then that life busted me, as sometimes it busts everyone!” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 99.
The fatal illness of his wife Emma-she died in November 1955 -marked the time when his life was nearing its end. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 100.
When I took up my duties with Jung I had known him for about twenty years-my analysis with him began in 1937, a few months before he went to India. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 100.
Respect for life also characterized Jung’s analytical work. Worried or depressed patients hoped in vain for exhortation or comfort. Jung gave them something else: he wanted to get them to integrate the necessary suffering to their life. To soothe it away or exclude it would rob them of a vital experience, while the core of the depression would remain and soon enough provoke new suffering. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 103.
Any kind of “joyful Christianity” or sentimental prettification exasperated Jung to the limit. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 104.
Usually he enjoyed a wonderful, deep sleep, and plenty of it, the result not only of his good constitution but of his close and positive relationship with the unconscious. Sleep was the source of his psychic strength. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 105.
Jung was a good Swiss citizen. Nothing but illness could prevent him from casting his vote, even in old age, and every Swiss knows the sense of responsibility and consciousness of duty this entails. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 108.
Jung belonged to the “freethinking” or Democratic party. It may be remarked parenthetically that he supported women’s right to vote, a right hitherto non-existent in Switzerland and a subject of fervent disputes. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 108.
Foreign newspapers came into the house on days of political crisis; and magazines, especially the English Listener and the American National Geographic Magazine and
the Atlantic Monthly, satisfied his need for information on political and other matters. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 108.
As a student he had to get his money, or at least part of it, from the sale of antiques belonging to a relative. Jung knew what poverty was. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 109.
But there was something else too: objects possessed for Jung, a meaning in themselves, so they had to be treated with special care. “Things take their revenge!” he once hurled threateningly at my head when I had mislaid or botched something-I no longer remember what. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 109.
For anyone like Jung, who devoted so much care and attention to them, objects began to animate themselves, living a life of their own. They would start talking, and communicate things that remain hidden from others. Objects are not always inert; sometimes they seem to join in the game of life, to reflect the mood and thoughts of people. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 109.
“‘You should make friends again with the nearest things,’ said Nietzsche and didn’t. He was wafted away on the great wind, drunk with his own words. Even things, thanks to the meaning immanent in them, answer us as we address them. They are socially minded and afford us delightful company in hours and days of loneliness.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 110.
Nobody enjoyed laughing as much as Jung; nobody made others laugh as he could. After the death of his wife his laughter became rarer and quieter. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 113.
His impatience was due not only to his temperament-astrologically he was a Leo- but also to his extreme sensitivity, which both enriched and burdened his life. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 114.
But then he became serious and began telling me about himself and the sensitiveness that had tormented him from early youth, how it had encumbered him in his relationships and made him unsure of himself, how ashamed it had made him feel, but how, because of this same impressionability, he had perceived beauties and experienced things other people scarcely dreamed of. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 115.
But whenever a concert pianist gave a recital on the grand piano at the house in Kushnacht-the last one was the Russian- Ania Dorfmann- he was impressed by Jung’s genuine feeling for music. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 116.
Once when in a consultation I wanted to tell him about my relation to my parents-the piece de resistance of a classic analysis-he wouldn’t let me get a word out. “Don’t waste your time! Anyway I know a person’s relation to his parents at first glance!” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 116.
Burning letters in the beautiful old stove with green tiles which stood in his library was a solemn and at the same time cheerful occasion. Once, with the fire roaring, he smote the side of the stove with the flat of his hand, as though clapping an old friend on the shoulder, and remarked, laughing: “This fellow is my discretion!” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 117.
That he could still remember the dreams of his earliest childhood when he was well over eighty is astonishing enough. After he had recounted them for the memoirs, notes of the same dream were found which he had written some forty years earlier, and they differed in not a single detail from the spoken versions. Sometimes even the wording was nearly the same. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 118.
“Thank God my memory does not burden me with personal things.!!-he [Jung] used to exclaim with relief. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 118.
These [Eranos] “wall sessions” were the unforgettable highlights of the summer. They acquired a different character when Erich Neumann, of Tel-Aviv, was there, for then a dialogue developed between the two, and we listened. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 119.
Not so Jung: no question of letting the plan drop! Of course I must go on the trip, I had also to accept the risk of danger. The unconscious was nature, and like nature it could either help man or destroy him. What mattered was that he should try to confront nature consciously, to fathom it and transform it. That was the whole venture of life. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 121.
Before–going—to Africa in 1926 he learned Swahili, which stood him in good stead during palavers with the natives in Kenya and Uganda. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 122.
He [Jung] had no Hebrew, which he regretted very much, especially after he became acquainted with the texts of Jewish mysticism, which he would have liked to have read in the original. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 122.
After the death of his [Jung] wife, his four daughters and his daughter-in-law-each the center of a large family of her own-took turns staying with him for a while, to keep him company. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 122.
It was obvious that dictating letters tired him, but they took an important place in his life. As his libido stopped flowing into the production of scientific works, they became a receptacle for his creative ideas, and so their number continually increased in his later years. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 123.
But at bottom he understood and accepted his “outsiderness,” because he knew that his ideas expected too much of his contemporaries. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 124.
Jung was all the more pleased and grateful for the successful interviews, such as those with Mircea Eliade, Georges Duplain, Georg Gerster, Gordon Young, Richard Evans, and John Freeman. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 125.
A distinguishing mark of his [Jung’s] correspondence is that the great bulk of it was conducted with people unknown to him. Letters to the well-known or famous were in the minority. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 125.
It was one of Jung’s exaggerations to say that the “man of the people” understood him better than the intellectuals,… ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 125.
It was a particular joy to him that an abbess in Alsace read his “Answer to Job” with her nuns. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 126.
When Jung was writing, he enclosed himself in an invisible shell. Nothing could distract him or break through his concentration; it was a cardinal law that he was never under any circumstances to be spoken to while writing. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 128.
Very early on Jung had taken to giving the typescripts to his pupils to read before sending them to the printer. All criticisms, all suggestions for changes, cuts or additions were carefully weighed and were generally accepted. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 128.
“Jung smoked a water-cooled pipe.” “By choice he smoked Granger tobacco.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 129.
The [Tobacco] mixture was kept in a dark bronze box, which for some unaccountable reason bore the name “Habbakuk.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 129.
Jung was no cigarette smoker, but after luncheon he allowed himself a Brazilian cigar, which he would offer also to his friends. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 129.
We had been sitting on the terrace shortly before his death, after a stroke had made speaking infinitely difficult for him. Even then he wanted to be told about what was going on in
the world, about the letters, people, telephone calls, and gave brief indications of answers, hints of thoughts. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 130.
Jung liked playing patience. He had no compunction, now and then, in an emergency, in helping fate a little by switching the cards around. The game had to come out, dammit! The scandalization of others who caught him out in such unabashed cheating did not disturb him in the slightest, it may even have spiced his enjoyment. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 131.
He liked English thrillers, but Simenon was his favorite. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 131.
For Jung the figure of the detective was a modern version of the alchemical Mercurius, solver of all riddles, and he was entertained by his heroic deeds. He also enjoyed science fiction. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 131.
There was the laughing head of the trickster that Jung said looked like Balzac, and a naked female form with arms outstretched towards a mare-he called it Pegasus. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 133.
There was also a relief of a bear with a ball and one of a snake. Thus these stones lived. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 135.
Then followed a simple but delicious meal: soup-generally an enriched . Knorr or Maggi packet-soup-a dish filled with an abundance of cheeses, butter, bread, and fruit. A cup of coffee and sometimes a liqueur ended the meal. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 135.
“It is well known that Jung was a connoisseur of wine.” “Cocktails he detested.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 135.
Jung died in his house in Kusnacht, amid the great images that filled his soul. As the thought of death had been his familiar for many decades, it did not come as an enemy, although he
was familiar also with the pain caused by the finite11ess of life. ~Aniela Jaffe, Jung’s Last Years, Page 135.
The spectacle of eternal nature makes me painfully aware of my weakness and perishability, and I find no joy in imagining an equanimity in conspectu mortis. As I once dreamt, my
will to live is a glowing daimon, who sometimes makes the consciousness of my mortality hellish difficult for me. One can, at most, save face like the unjust steward, and then not
always, so that my lord wouldn’t find even that much to commend. But the daimon reeks nothing of that, for life. At the core is steel on stone. ~Carl Jung, Jung’s Last Years, Page 136.
For relaxation, Jung played solitaire in the evenings, occasionally “helping fate a little by switching the cards around” in “unabashed cheating.” ~Aniela Jaffe, Last Years, Pages 114-115.
“Jung’s Last Years” by Aniela Jaffe
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