CARL GUSTAV JUNG, of Zurich, is not only the most famous of living psychiatrists, he is one of the few practitioners of that craft who admit that man has a soul. And by soul, Jung means not just a psychiatric psyche but the old-fashioned kind that might even go to heaven. He is an unabashed user of the word "spiritual," and a strong believer in the practical utility of conceptions like God and the Devil. Unlike the orthodox followers of Sigmund Freud, who attribute most of mankind's mental troubles to the sexual conflicts of infancy, Jung maintains that the religious instinct is as strong as the sexual, and that man ignores it at his peril. Though his ideas cut freely into areas traditionally assigned to the mystic, the theologian and the philosopher, he maintains stoutly that he is a scientist. His methods, in his own view, are as empirical as those of Albert Einstein.
The ebullient state of Dr. Jung's own psyche is a striking argument for the soundness of his ideas. He is a massive 7 6-year-old man, who seems to row himself joyfully about his home in suburban Küsnacht with large, oarlike hands. He lives a happy domestic life with his wife, who is a practicing psychiatrist; they have 19 grandchildren. He speaks English with an American accent and vocabulary, explaining that he considers American English more emotional and directly influenced by the unconscious mind than English English is. His white hair usually looks as though he had just come in out of a high wind. His laughter often shakes the walls of the room, and he will discuss his ideas by the hour, sometimes humorously, with nearly anybody who happens to visit him. These discussions, accompanied by toothy grins and constant puffs from a pipe, are so lengthy and enthusiastic that they sometimes seduce him from more important work.
AT the moment, the work consists of a three-volume treatise on alchemy—part of a veritable library of esoteric and clinical literature which Jung hopes to leave behind as his testament to humanity. This may seem a somewhat bizarre occupation for a psychiatrist. But Jung explains that alchemy is one of those fantastic areas in which the mind has expressed itself unconsciously—a world of mysterious symbolism which can be interpreted psychologically, just as dreams are. There are times when Dr. Jung actually seems to resemble a sorcerer rather than a psychiatrist. He loves to sprinkle his writing with scholastic terms from the Middle Ages. His home is filled with strange Asiatic sculptures. He wears a curious ring, ornamented with an ancient effigy of a snake, the bearer of light in the pre-Christian Gnostic cult. When hard at work, he often disappears for days into a towered, castlelike hideaway across the Lake of Zurich, where he does his own cooking, and diverts himself by chopping wood and carving esoteric inscriptions on large blocks of granite. Jung has long since given up his psychiatric practice, and now devotes his working hours to exploring the dim boundaries where science meets the irrational.