Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung

The Book in Two Sentences

All behaviours are governed by unconscious psychological processes. Carl Jung saw the importance of cultivating a rich inner life, and in this autobiography reflects on his childhood, travels, and encounters with the psyche.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections Summary

Disclaimer: these are my notes from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. This summary may contain my own ideas, references to other resources, as well as passages from the book.
Early Experiences
Are we not made of matter? As a child, Jung played a game that went something like this: "I sat down on this stone... 'I am sitting on top of this stone and it is underneath.' But the stone also could say 'I' and think: 'I am lying here on this slope and he is sitting on top of me.' The question then arose: 'Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting?'"
All your possessions outlive you: "Whenever I thought that I was the stone, the conflict ceased. 'The stone has no uncertainties, no urge to communicate, and is eternally the same for thousands of years,' I would think, 'while I am only a passing phenomenon which bursts into all kinds of emotions, like a flame that flares up quickly and then goes out.'"
On Divinity
"Nothing could persuade me that 'in the image of God' applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism..."
"From the beginning I had a sense of destiny, as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security, and, though I could never prove it to myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have this certainty, it had me."
"Man always has some mental reservation, even in the face of divine decrees. Otherwise, where would be his freedom? And what would be the use of that freedom if it could not threaten Him who threatens it?"
"There is a fine old story about a student who came to a rabbi and said, “In the olden days there were men who saw the face of God. Why don’t they any more?” The rabbi replied, 'Because nowadays no one can stoop so low.'"
Psychotherapeutic Practice
Early in his practice, Jung was visited by a woman plagued by guilt: "With that, her cup was full; she felt that she was morally done for. She had to confess, and for this purpose she came to me. She was a murderess, but on top of that she had also murdered herself. For one who commits such a crime destroys [her] own soul. The murderer has already passed sentence [onto herself]."
"By telling me her story she had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an earthly human being. Hence she was able to return to life and even to marry. Thereafter I regarded the sufferings of the mentally ill in a different light. For I had gained insight into the richness and importance of their inner experience."
"In my practice I was constantly impressed by the way the human psyche reacts to a crime committed unconsciously. After all, that young woman was initially not aware that she had killed her child. And yet she had fallen into a condition that appeared to be the expression of extreme consciousness of guilt..."
On the contribution of Freud, Jung writes: "[Freud] had the courage to let the case material speak for itself, and in this way was able to penetrate into the real psychology of his patients. He saw with the patient’s eyes, so to speak, and so reached a deeper understanding of mental illness than had hitherto been possible."
"For psychotherapy to be effective a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffering."
"The past is terribly real and present, and it catches everyone who cannot save his skin with a satisfactory answer..."
"it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in authority. In the great crises of life... little tricks of suggestion do not help."
For therapy to be effective, Jung believed in personalization: "In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions. Today they may be valid, tomorrow it may be the turn of other assumptions... To my mind, in dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do."
"A solution which would be out of the question for me may be just the right one for someone else."
"There does seem to be unlimited knowledge present in nature, it is true, but it can be comprehended by consciousness only when the time is ripe for it. The process, presumably, is like what happens in the individual psyche: a man may go about for many years with an inkling of something, but grasps it clearly only at a particular moment."
Thoughts and Experience
"Nietzsche had lost the ground under his feet because he possessed nothing more than the inner world of his thoughts—which incidentally possessed him more than he it. He was uprooted and hovered above the earth, and therefore he succumbed to exaggeration and irreality. For me, such irreality was the quintessence of horror, for I aimed, after all, at this world and this life."
"He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, 'If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.'"
"I took great care to try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically—so far as this was possible—and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them."
"I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned."
"How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things which would not yet have begun, other things which would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished—and yet all this would be one. The only thing that feeling could grasp would be a sum, an iridescent whole, containing all at once expectation of a beginning, surprise at what is now happening, and satisfaction or disappointment with the result of what has happened. One is interwoven into an indescribable whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity."
"I have also realized that one must accept the thoughts that go on within oneself of their own accord as part of one’s reality. The categories of true and false are, of course, always present; but because they are not binding they take second place. The presence of thoughts is more important than our subjective judgment of them."
Myths and Archetypes
"Out of sheer envy we are obliged to smile at the Indians’ naïveté and to plume ourselves on our cleverness; for otherwise we would discover how impoverished and down at the heels we are. Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth."
"Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also be recognized 'in changed form' by the thoughtful person. The great ones of the past have not died, as we think; they have merely changed their names."
"Our myth has become mute, and gives no answers. The fault lies not in it as it is set down in the Scriptures, but solely in us, who have not developed it further, who, rather, have suppressed any such attempts..."
"Archetypal statements are based upon instinctive preconditions and have nothing to do with reason; they are neither rationally grounded nor can they be banished by rational arguments. [Yet, they] have always been part of the world scene..."
Happiness and Accomplishment
We can affirm failure just as much as success. On the topic of pain, Jung writes: "one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them."
"[One] who has not passed through the inferno of [their] passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force."
"I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life."
"The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all."

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