Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Gustav Jung appears as one of the great giants of the 20th century, not only as a psychotherapist and psychologist but also as a writer, historian of ideas, artist and mystic. He also coined many of the psychological concepts in use today, such as archetypes, the collective unconscious, extrovert/introvert personality, complexes, synchronicity and individuation. He is the originator of the analytical, or as it has also been called, "Jungian" psychology.

Jung was born on July 26, 1875 in Kesswill in the canton Thurgau in Switzerland. He was the son of Paul Achilles Jung, a rural pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church, and Emilie Preiswerk, who came from a wealthy and reputable family. Carl Gustav seems to have been a rather lonely and introverted child for whom imagination and inner sentiments played an unusually large role. His mother he sometimes perceived as being somewhat scary. She appears to have been a both strange and powerful woman in contact with the spiritual worlds. As for the father, the young Carl Gustav felt disappointed and disillusioned when he realized that the father managed his priestly office without any real and true faith.

His childhood experiences and observations - often of quite a mystical kind - became the basis for many of Jung's later psychological discoveries. Also, nature and art spoke strongly to him. Eventually, however, he came to study medicine at the University of Basel and as a student he became increasingly interested in psychiatry. His doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1903, was titled "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena."

A few years later a contact with the much older Sigmund Freud led to a close cooperation and personal friendship between them, until 1913, when instead a dramatic and definite break occurred as a result of their increasingly diverse perceptions. The fundamental difference between the two pioneers in the consciousness research area was the view of the human soul. While Freud denied the existence of any spiritual phenomena, these were instead very real and fundamental to Jung. To him, the unconscious was not the dustbin of repressed perversions and other mental clutter that Freud believed, but rather a fundamental and creative part of the human psyche. So it is easy to understand that the break between the two became definite. Jung never became the crown prince of psychoanalysis as Freud had hoped for. Instead, he created his own psychological school and focus.

Jung made several research journeys to foreign and overseas countries and cultures - in Africa, America and Asia - to obtain as comprehensive a view as possible of the human psyche and what unites people despite external differences. His openness and interest in "unscientific" phenomena such as astrology, alchemy, Tarot and the Chinese I Ching, has led many to consider Jung as being unscientific and fuzzy. Others instead see the grandeur of this, that he managed to combine Western science with other approaches and ideas and thus reach a far deeper and more holistic and all-embracing insight.

Jung saw individuation as a natural and necessary part of the development of the human psyche. It involves the integration of inner contradictions, which also includes the unconscious gradually being assimilated or taken up into the conscious mind as a way of psychological maturation. The discovery and realization of our deepest inner potential Jung regarded as the very meaning of human life. This transformative journey he called individuation and he could also see it described in the symbolic language of alchemy, astrology and religious mysticism.

As for family life, Carl Gustav Jung married Emma Rauschenbach in 1903. She came from a wealthy family, and she, too, worked as a psychoanalyst. Together they had five children (one daughter Gret became an eminent astrologer as she grew up). The marriage lasted until the death of his wife in 1955. Jung himself died after a brief illness in June 1961 at the age of 85 years.

His birth chart looks like this:

Carl Gustav Jung, 26 July 1875, 19:29, Kesswill, Switzerland

(Source: Astro DataBank)

Unfortunately we do not know the exact time of Carl Gustav Jung's birth, we only have the information that he was born "at sunset." The horoscope is rectified to match the time the Sun went down. It gives him the Ascendant in Aquarius and Midheaven in Sagittarius, which seems to fit in well with his life and person.

The most prominent signs of the horoscope are Taurus (with the Moon, Pluto, Neptune and the Third House), Leo (with the Sun, Uranus and the Seventh House), Sagittarius (with Midheaven, Mars, the Eleventh House) and Aquarius (with the Ascendant and Saturn in the First House).

Mercury, which should be emphasized in a psychologist's horoscope, is in conjunction with Venus in susceptible and Moon-ruled Cancer in the Sixth House of work and health and squares the two Lunar nodes and sextiles the Moon itself. It rules the Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Houses of the horoscope.

The Fire element dominates with the other three in relatively good balance with each other. Emphasized houses are the third, sixth and seventh. As for quadrants and hemispheres, the planets are evenly distributed. The Moon is in a waning phase, reflecting strong convictions.

The Ascendant in Aquarius indicates an unconventional and original but also sociable person. We see the scientist with a certain distance to his area of research. This is reinforced by Saturn in the same sign in the First House.

Midheaven - and Mars – in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius reflects the great enthusiasm and energy that Jung was putting into his career and research, and also shows his strong interest in foreign cultures, in human experience beyond the modern European horizon. We anticipate a strong desire in Jung to search for and create meaning.

The Sun in its own sign Leo on the Descendant in opposition to the Aquarius Ascendant and in a (very) wide conjunction with the Ascendant ruler Uranus in the same sign, and also in trine to the Midheaven, suggests his great interest in and study of the human mind. It gives also the image of a sunny, generous and kind-hearted personality.

The Sun exactly squaring Neptune in Taurus near the Third House cusp reflects a great sensitivity and artistry and suggests some of his crucial discoveries about the union of the unconscious with the conscious mind, and how he in his own conscious mind came into contact with the collective unconscious (Neptune).

The Moon in Taurus in the Third House is in conjunction with Pluto and squares Uranus in Leo. Moreover, it forms sextiles with Mercury and Venus in Cancer in the Sixth House. Thus, we can deduce the strong intensity of Jung's own mental experiences, his strong intuition and his intense and in-depth exploration of both his own mind and the more general human psyche. We also see Jung's relationship to his mother reflected, the powerful but eccentric woman, who during childhood sometimes would scare him.

We can see how the Sun and Moon both are in close and strong relationship with all of the outer, transpersonal planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, reflecting Jung's dramatic and intense "encounter" with deeper and largely unexplored layers of the human psyche. This is reinforced by the retrograde Saturn in Aquarius in the First House closely squaring transpersonal Pluto. Saturn also rules, through Capricorn, the Twelfth House of both spirituality and the collective unconscious - Jung's major research fields.

The March-disposed North Lunar node in Aries in the Second House mirrors Jung's challenge to hold on to his own values and go his own way, which was made particularly clear by the dramatic break with "the father of psychoanalysis," Sigmund Freud. The same is shown by militant Mars in Jupiter's sign Sagittarius on the Eleventh House cusp in trine with both Uranus and Chiron and in sextile with Saturn as well as Jupiter. Jupiter in Libra in the Eighth House, trining the First House Saturn in Aquarius, indicates his interest in and exploration of life's hidden sides (the Eighth House).

Also Chiron has an important and central place in the horoscope. In Aries in the second house in conjunction with Neptune the Centaur stands in opposition to Jupiter in Libra while also forming a trine with Mars in Sagittarius and a sextile with Saturn in Aquarius. It seems that Chiron - the planet of pain and the healing arts - has a special masterminding or orchestrating role in Jung's horoscope. After all, his whole life and his entire life's work was all about human healing.

Finally, Pars Fortunae in Scorpio in Jung's Ninth House of studies and discoveries demonstrates that there is no doubt that his greatest joy and fulfillment lay in the deep exploration of the hidden secrets of life and consciousness.