In chapter 1, Jung mentions a few very early memories.

"My mother took me to the Thurgan to visit friends, who had a castle on Lake Constance. I could not be dragged away from the water. The waves from the steamer washed up to the shore, the sun glistened on the water, and the sand under the water had been curled into little ridges by the waves. The lake stretched away and away into the distance. This expanse of water was an inconceivable pleasure to me, an incomparable splendor. At that time the idea became fixed in my mind that I must live near a lake; without water, I thought, nobody could live at all."

How interesting that he spent his life learning what lay underneath the waves for all of us. A lake is such a great metaphor for our mental life, with its hidden depths. Experts on the Enneagram believe that Jung was most likely a Nine, a type often compared to the placid surface of a lake. A Nine's energy is easygoing and peaceful, though there is turmoil within.


Jung's mother was hospitalized for several months when he was about three. "From then on, I always felt mistrustful when the word 'love' was spoken. The feeling I associated with 'woman' was for a long time that of innate unreliability. 'Father,' on the other hand, meant reliability and--powerlessness. That is the handicap I started off with. Later, these early impressions were revised: I have trusted men friends and been disappointed by them, and I have mistrusted women and was not disappointed."

This later sentence seems ambiguous; when he says he mistrusted women and wasn't disappointed, does that mean they confirmed his mistrust? Very few male leaders came to have Jung's reputation for respecting the status of women. He was surrounded by a circle of devoted women students, some of whom became analysts and his biographers.


Jung describes being babysat by a "young, very pretty and charming girl with blue eyes and fair hair" who later became his mother-in-law. That might shed some light on the fact that he said, upon first seeing his wife-to-be, that he was going to marry her; perhaps the resemblance to her mother reminded him of a pleasant memory. Jung also remarks that she "admired my father," which is interesting; the word "admire" is sometimes used to mean "love" but here he might have meant only respect.