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awake my soul, BBC Face to Face, Carl Gustav Jung, Face to Face, John Freeman, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Red Book

Man cannot stand a meaningless life
Carl Gustav Jung and John Freeman
BBC’s Face to Face

Echoing Anaïs Nin’s meditation on the fluid self from a decade earlier, Jung confirms that fixed personality is a myth.

Legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961), along with his frenemy Freud, is considered the founding father of modern analytical psychology. He coined the concepts of collective consciousness and introverted vs. extroverted personality, providing the foundation for the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Though famously accused of having lost his soul, Jung had a much more heartening view of human nature than Freud and memorably wrote that “the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

On October 22 of 1959, BBC’s Face to Face — an unusual series of pointed, almost interrogative interviews seeking to “unmask public figures” — aired a segment on Jung, included in the 1977 anthology C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters (public library). Eighty-four at the time and still working, he talks to New Statesman editor John Freeman about education, religion, consciousness, human nature, and his temperamental differences with Freud, which sparked his study of personality types.

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Jung speaks with Freeman on a range of subjects, from his childhood and education to his association with Sigmund Freud and his views on death, religion and the future of the human race. At one point Freeman asks Jung whether he believes in God, and Jung seems to hesitate. “It’s difficult to answer,” he says.

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Thanks for visiting with me.

Eric