- Table of Contents below -
"[I have to ask] 'Have you read a book I have written within the last 30 years? And did you understand it?'" - Professor Carl Jung, 1960.
Presented here is a historical overview with one of the most-famous interviews of Jung, including the immediate public replies in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and a number of Jung's letters.
The BBC interview's media has been wholly remastered from multiple references/sources: video has been clarified, audio has been completely revised, the whole waveform hand-edited.
In early 1959, producer Hugh Burnett and journalist John Freeman traveled from their Face to Face studio in England, to Switzerland, to interview Carl Jung at his home in Zurich. Shortly after an endearing story about Jung's grandchildren stealing his hat, Freeman asks about spirituality, along these lines: "Did you believe in God when you were young?" Jung: "Oh yes." Freeman: "Do you still believe in God?" Jung: "Difficult to answer. I know. I don't need to believe. I know".
Immediately after the broadcast, replies were published in London in The Observer, The Guardian, Daily Herald, etc., with both delighted and dismissive tones. Talk around the town, and many people wrote the editors. Others wrote to Jung. At the end of this video, I read the articles, letters to the editor, and letters which Jung wrote directly in response about the fallout from the interview.
Dr. Jung expresses frustration at the frequent misunderstanding of his work. Worse still, the intentional disregard. Throughout his life he had patience with those who make demands for reducing complex ideas to simple ideas, as it appears in his two volumes of Letters. In his final years, he expresses fatigue from his continued writing, compounded by the never-ending flow of reductive/ill-informed colleagues and fans, and antagonistic people.
Such antagonism, as tends to come from one-sided people. While researching for this project, we uncovered a surprising fact: Mr. Richardson mentioning Professor Jung, in the Observer, November 1 1959, not in only the one article included in the video, but a second! Twice, in one day! His second article was omitted; he mentions Jung by name, but the article is not about the broadcast: Richardson wrote a gushing positive book review for the autobiography of a Freudian.
The examples set by one-sided people, along with opportunists in social media, we see tribalism of "members of the club", fans of X, regularly mocking Y and fans of Y, etcetera. There is a model of dignity shown in the Face to Face interview, where Dr. Jung extends his professional courtesy to the late Dr. Freud.
We encourage all viewers to read Jung's original writing.
This video is PART TWO of a single project.
PART ONE: an evaluation and analysis on popular interpretation of his writing, study of quotes and ideas that are used in over-simplified formats, that become alterations/distortions, and to get a sense for healthy vitality or pathology of those transformations. It is available here: • Carl Jung's words & wr...
PART THREE: 2024 on-going, where I create some videos about CW Vol 5: Symbols of Transformation, "CG Jung Speaking", and "Jung Stripped Bare By His Biographers, Even".
0:00 - Introduction
1:08 - Face to Face (Oct 22 1959)
39:11 - Friday Oct 23 1959 - Guardian article, by their TV critic
41:41 - Friday Oct 23 1959 - Daily Herald article, Phil Diack
43:06 - Sunday Oct 25 1959 - Observer article, Maurice Richardson
45:10 - Sunday Nov 1 1959 - Observer article, Maurice Richardson
46:50 - Sunday Nov 1 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, Phoebe Hesketh (to Maurice Richardson)
48:04 - Sunday Nov 8 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, Margaret Knight (to Phoebe Kesketh)
50:36 - Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Observer Letters to Editor, (several)
50:45 - Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from (Rev) R. F. Dosseter
52:20 - Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from Phoebe Hesketh (to Margaret Knight)
53:19 - Sunday Nov 15 1959 - Letter from Bernard Campbell (to Margaret Knight)
55:13 - Introduction to Jung's letters
55:38 - Nov 16 1959 - Letter to Valentine Brooke (see Maurice Richardson, Oct 25, also Nov 1)
1:06:13 - Dec 5 1959 - Letter to Hugh Burnett
1:07:49 - Dec 5 1959 - Letter to M. Leonard
1:11:59 - Jun 30 1960 - Letter to Hugh Burnett
1:16:27 - Recommendation of books
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