Carl Jung - a paranormal Einstein ?

Anthony North: Paranormal research is more than narrating the cases an investigator comes across. Also important is the idea that the cases can be analysed in order to provide theory for what is going on. As data leads to theory in science, so too with the world of mystery.The problem with this approach, however, is that few theorists have achieved the audience they deserve. However, some stand out above the throng. Perhaps the greatest of those was psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung.Young Jung: Arthur C Clarke once commented that not only did the paranormal not have its Einstein, it was still awaiting its Aristotle. I disagree with this statement. Jung fits the bill more than adequately, rationalizing the paranormal like no other researcher.Jung was born in 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland, the son of a very spiritual family. As an adult he became vain and obsessive and had many affairs, having almost a sex addiction. However, he was very much a genius, trapped between the academic and the more esoteric.This was apparent to him from the age of three when he began to have mystical dreams and was convinced another person lived inside him. He named this person Philemon and saw him as age old wisdom.

The psychologist: If Jung hadn’t become an academic, he would have become a great medium, already exhibiting elements of other personalities inside him. However, he trained medically in Basel before moving to a Zurich psychiatric clinic in 1900, eventually becoming a student of Freud.Vital to this period was his identification of two states of mind - introversion and extroversion. The mentally healthy person formed a balance between these two extremes, finding himself and realising who he is through a process Jung was to call Individuation.Most people only discovered their true self following what Jung termed a ‘midlife crisis’, when material values failed to satisfy, requiring an understanding of the more esoteric.

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