Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can not Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959)

Carl Gus­tav Jung, founding father of ana­lyt­ic psy­chol­o­gy and explor­er of the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, was born on July 26, 1875 within the vil­lage of Kess­wil, within the Thur­gau can­ton of Switzer­land. Above, we current a fas­ci­nat­ing 39-minute inter­view of Jung by John Free­man for the BBC professional­gram Face to Face. It was filmed at Jung’s house at Küs­nacht, on the shore of Lake Zürich, and broad­forged on Octo­ber 22, 1959, when Jung was 84 years previous. He speaks on a spread of sub­jects, from his youngster­hood and edu­ca­tion to his asso­ci­a­tion with Sig­mund Freud and his views on loss of life, reli­gion and the way forward for the human race. At one level Free­man asks Jung whether or not he believes in God, and Jung appears to hes­i­tate. “It’s dif­fi­cult to reply,” he says. “I do know. I don’t have to consider. I do know.”

If you need to enroll in Open Tradition’s free electronic mail newslet­ter, please discover it right here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­e-book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you need to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our web site. It’s exhausting to rely 100% on adverts, and your con­tri­bu­tions will assist us con­tin­ue professional­vid­ing the most effective free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to be taught­ers each­the place. You may con­tribute by way of Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!