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Labyrinths : Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
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Overview
A sensational, eye-opening account of Emma Jung's complex marriage to Carl Gustav Jung and the hitherto unknown role she played in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement.
Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the twentieth century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature--one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland--travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man.
Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung. The son of a penniless pastor working as an assistant physician in an insane asylum, Jung dazzled Emma with his intelligence, confidence, and good looks. More important, he offered her freedom from the confines of a traditional haute-bourgeois life. But Emma did not know that Jung's charisma masked a dark interior--fostered by a strange, isolated childhood and the sexual abuse he'd suffered as a boy--as well as a compulsive philandering that would threaten their marriage.
Using letters, family interviews, and rich, never-before-published archival material, Catrine Clay illuminates the Jungs' unorthodox marriage and explores how it shaped--and was shaped by--the scandalous new movement of psychoanalysis. Most important, Clay reveals how Carl Jung could never have achieved what he did without Emma supporting him through his private torments. The Emma that emerges in the pages of Labyrinths is a strong, brilliant woman, who, with her husband's encouragement, becomes a successful analyst in her own right.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780062245120
- ISBN-10: 0062245120
- Publisher: Harper
- Publish Date: November 2016
- Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.35 pounds
- Page Count: 416
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The life of Emma Jung
A biography of Emma Jung is by necessity also a biography of her husband, famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung. By placing the focus on Emma, however, Catrine Clay comes up with a fresh and compelling take on the story of Jung’s relationship with Freud and the early days of psychoanalysis.
Wealthy, educated Emma refused Carl when the penniless doctor first proposed, but with her mother’s encouragement, Carl asked and was accepted the second time around. In part, the attraction was intellectual: At the time, an educated woman was more likely to find mental satisfaction in her husband than through her own career. And Carl’s work as a resident doctor at Burghölzli, an asylum treating patients with a range of mental illnesses, was certainly fascinating. While Emma may have hoped to help Carl with his work, pregnancy and domestic cares soon preoccupied her.
The young couple traveled to Vienna to meet Carl’s hero, the eminent Dr. Sigmund Freud, and the two men developed an intense attachment that was to shape the developing field of psychoanalysis until their infamous split a decade later. Here Emma also discovered Carl’s predisposition to infatuation with smart women. Throughout their marriage, Emma would have to grapple with the numerous frustrated, intelligent women who clustered around her husband, ultimately accepting one of them, Toni Wolff, into the household.
Labyrinths does a fine job portraying the tightrope Emma walked to manage her husband’s health. Carl was haunted by a “second self,” an emanation from his unconscious that heard voices and saw visions. As much as Emma struggled with her husband’s flirtatiousness, she was also integral to his well-being, and they succeeded in building a long and solid marriage. Perhaps most happily, once her children were grown, Emma was able to write psychological essays, finally stepping into the limelight on her own.
This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
The life of Emma Jung
A biography of Emma Jung is by necessity also a biography of her husband, famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung. By placing the focus on Emma, however, Catrine Clay comes up with a fresh and compelling take on the story of Jung’s relationship with Freud and the early days of psychoanalysis.
Wealthy, educated Emma refused Carl when the penniless doctor first proposed, but with her mother’s encouragement, Carl asked and was accepted the second time around. In part, the attraction was intellectual: At the time, an educated woman was more likely to find mental satisfaction in her husband than through her own career. And Carl’s work as a resident doctor at Burghölzli, an asylum treating patients with a range of mental illnesses, was certainly fascinating. While Emma may have hoped to help Carl with his work, pregnancy and domestic cares soon preoccupied her.
The young couple traveled to Vienna to meet Carl’s hero, the eminent Dr. Sigmund Freud, and the two men developed an intense attachment that was to shape the developing field of psychoanalysis until their infamous split a decade later. Here Emma also discovered Carl’s predisposition to infatuation with smart women. Throughout their marriage, Emma would have to grapple with the numerous frustrated, intelligent women who clustered around her husband, ultimately accepting one of them, Toni Wolff, into the household.
Labyrinths does a fine job portraying the tightrope Emma walked to manage her husband’s health. Carl was haunted by a “second self,” an emanation from his unconscious that heard voices and saw visions. As much as Emma struggled with her husband’s flirtatiousness, she was also integral to his well-being, and they succeeded in building a long and solid marriage. Perhaps most happily, once her children were grown, Emma was able to write psychological essays, finally stepping into the limelight on her own.
This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.